BANG BANG THE WITCH IS DEAD!!!!!!!!!

The BBQ Pit
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Despite the tone of Tornado Siren’s posts on this subject, which suggests that everyone in Oklahoma is dancing in the streets, we’re relieved it’s over and, as was said by several of the survivors, family members, and many other who were effected by this, we don’t have to hear him anymore. Yes, I’m sure they’ll be news reports and probably more books with more conspirecy theories, but from the man responsible, nothing more.

For anyone to suggest otherwise does a great disservice to Oklahoma, the citizens and all the people touched by this tragedy.

Like hundreds of others, I spent part of my morning at a prayer vigil. It was an emotionally draining day for me and the people I was with as we remembered the horrors of that day and the days that followed as the death toll rose and we prayed or sent positive energies for the families. I can only imagine what the survivors and the victim’s families were going through this morning.

I cannot begin to imagine what today was like for the McVeigh’s, but I can’t help but feel for the man who had to come to grips with what his son had become.

Timothy McVeigh was unrepentant to the last and I don’t believe that another six, ten, or sixty years would have changed that.

While I don’t think he got the punishment he deserved, he got the harshest that the laws of our land could give him.

From the OP:

From the Oklahoma City National Memorial:

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I have become uncertain bout the death penalty. I used to believe that it was proper to rid society of those who become continual threats to everyone. If I remember rightly, Ted Bundy escaped from one jail to go on and murder again. If he had been executed originaly, there would be several women still alive. The idea of Charles Manson getting loose on society sends chills up my spine. However, I am beginning to think that there are to many cases where we have convicted innocent people. Because of this I am starting to believe that we need to drop the death penalty.

That said,
Mr. McVeigh is one of the prime examples of why I haven’t completely gone anti-death penalty. I truly believe that there are some people that we need to take no risks of getting loose at large again. People who have proven that they are dangerous to us. Quixotic stated:

McVeigh was human. But he chose to act inhuman. He coldly decided that he would kill many people in his cause. He decided that innocent people would die. He decided that it didn’t matter if children died. He decided that it didn’t matter if civilians died. He decided that he was going to attack the govenment that he hated, and that non-governmental citizens would also die. He decided that old, young, guilty, and the innocent would die.

He didn’t act in a rage, then go “oh shit what have I done?” He didn’t act while mentaly impared. He didn’t act under the influence. He didn’t act with one intention and have things go out of control.

He decided that he would resign from the human race.

I have no sympathy for him.

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mouthbreather - what I am trying to say is that I want to do what I want to do because of who I am, not because of who he is.

Wanting to act humanely in this situation isn’t for the benefit of the criminal. It’s for the benefit of me. As I say, I don’t define my humanity by his actions.

I can’t help feeling that if I act in any other way then I have let him make me less human. I can’t let that happen.

pan

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stofsky and wishbone, I have no qualms whatsoever with your point of view on the death penalty. If you believe any killing by anyone is wrong and capital punishment is something you feel uncomfortable with no matter how heinous the crime committed, I can’t deny you that point of view. I’ll chalk it up to, as the Grand Executioner of Texas would say, a “difference of opinion”.

quixote78 wrote:

"Maybe I shouldn’t compare everyone to Timothy McVeigh, especially total strangers like the three of you. I tell you what, I’ll compare myself to McVeigh, and then you can either: "

Quixote, I was going to respond to your posts comment by comment, but the other posters who have taken you to task really have it covered. As for your statement above, I’m glad you beat me to the three words I have for you:

**Speak for yourself.{/b]

I carry a baseball bat in my trunk because there are parts of the city that I live in that are full of drug dealers and other assorted ne’er do wells. I have doubts whether or not that bat will ever do me any good should I be accosted by some crackhead while driving down the street, but I don’t feel comfortable carrying firearms and at least that old wooden Louisville Slugger makes me feel safer.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had some loser cut me off, or honk their horn at me because I wasn’t making a turn fast enough, and I just wanted to stop my car, walk to my trunk, open it, pull out that bat, and just part that jerkoff’s hair with it.

If you want to say that Timothy McVeigh and I are similar because we all have entertained the notion of wanting to do violence to another human being, fine. But to make any comparison beyond that is a mistake.

The difference between me and a murderer or criminal is that I have the self-mastery and self-control to rationalize that committing violence on another human being is wrong. Assaulting him or her is an action that will bring about severe consequences for the other person and their family physically and mentally and me legally and morally.

So whenever I get cut off or tailgated by another driver, I just smile, turn my radio up, and remind myself that that my reaction to my circumstances is what separates me from an animal, and probably that idiot driver.

Or Timothy McVeigh.

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Interesting. While it doesn’t change my mind at all, it does give me some new perspective into your viewpoint.
I suppose my take on this is for my benefit as well. Obviously, I want someone who is a danger to society either locked away or killed. I guess the locked away part is to keep everyone I care about safe, and I guess it’s for my sense of justice that some payback be delivered on top of that.

goboy said earlier in this thread:

If there is absolutely no doubt about guilt/innocence (that part is very important), then truthfully I would prefer that someone who commits crimes of this magnitude be tortured for a long time before they are killed. Hell, even instead of killing them. Burned, mutilated, starved, you name it. It’s fine with me.

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God, where to start? I’m against the death penalty, for different reasons than most, but this shit pisses me off.

I’ll tell you what the difference is, if it isn’t obvious to every human with two brain cells to rub together:

I DIDN’T KILL AND MAIM HUNDREDS

And, indeed, neither did Vinnie. Or anyone else here.

And, indeed, he is NOT like me, and I resent the implication.

What a load of crap. If you can’t define a sane person by their actions, just how the hell can you define them? McVeigh was a dispicable monster guilty of a crime for which our system had no means of administering appropriate justice. I’m with Vinnie.

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First, I’m anti-death penalty, only because I’m not confident that our justice system can always find the right guy.

But this guy admitted to it, making my only objection moot. I got no problem with nasty chemicals injected into his arm to end his life. I would have prefered he have to play nurse-maid to a large, mean convict for several years prior, then getting torn apart by wolves.

But that’s just my anger talking.

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I’m not sure if people do not wish to accept that human monsters are still human, of if they are simply too blind to do so.

Leonard Cohen published “All There is to Know About Adolph Eichmann” in 1964, two years after Eichmann was hung.

Eichmann was responsible, directly and indirectly, for the deaths of millions of people. He coined the term “final solution.” He started the showers.

And he was “just following orders.”

He was human. He was a man. He was not a monster, a beast, a vampire, a boggart–he was human.

Humans can be evil. We can, as a species and individually, kill–brutally, en masse, and without remorse.

Like it or not, that’s part of being human.

Kill McVeigh as you wish. Exult in his death as you wish. Wish to have his blood on your own hands and in your mouth, if that’s your desire.

But do not for a moment forget that killing him addresses the symptom only.

Not the cause.

-John Donne

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I agree with you 10 percent.

I feel that the term “monster” is only being used as a way to describe the actions of a person and not to be taken literally. However, you are right in saying that we need to remember that Timothy is human so that we can better grasp the horror of what he had done.

Real monsters (okay, sort of real) such as Frankenstein and the Wolfman are frightening in a fun sort of way, but the normal appearing human monsters such as Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, John Wayne and now Timothy McVeigh are terrifying. They are terrifying because they look so normal.

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Allow me to insert “Gacy” in the appropriate spot for you, Diane. Unless that Ghengis Khan film really set you off.

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Oh Jezzzzzus, if my good buddy the “John Wayne Collector Plate Collector” were to hear about this, I would be in some major trouble.

Thanks for adding the “Gacy”.

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Not to nitpick, but that 168-1 comment wasn’t actually said by McVeigh. ABC just reported that it was, but they were wrong.

To touch on the main point, though. Tim McVeigh was a human being, and like all human beings, his life was a series of choices. The choices he made led him to a death chamber in Terre Haute, just like the choices I made led me to be typing this here. I can’t say I’m broken up by the fact he’s dead, but it’s certainly not something I’m glad about. I just wish he had made choices in his life other than the ones he did. I can’t say for sure why he made those choices, but the differences between him and me are matters of degree, not of kind. I think there’s an impulse in people that leads them towards evil, and another that leads them towards good…and he just listened to the evil impulse too much.

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And what kind of person would do this to another? Might we call that person “monster”?

On another issue: Recently, CNN interviewed Dan Herbeck, co-author of McVeigh’s biography. When asked if McVeigh expected to be caught and executed, he replied:

I wonder if McVeigh would have set off that bomb if there had been no death penalty.

Herbeck was asked how McVeigh was different from the media’s image of him:

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I think it was Drastic who said:

I couldnt put it better. I (being from Canada) have no say in your death penalty, but I would support its return to Canada. A few years ago, a dangerous criminal escaped from prison guards while at the hospital in the small city where I live. He was at large for months and killed about a half a dozen people. Elderly women, after he raped them… he beat an elderly preist to death… MY TAX MONEY FEEDS THIS MONSTER!!! and if he ever escapes again, and I have little doubt he will spend the rest of his life trying, he will hunt down those who helped to capture him, the reporters at his trial, anyone who ‘crossed him’, and he will rape the women, beat the men to death and set their homes on fire.

It was the most frightening time in the history of New Brunswick.

As far as I am concerned, Allan Legere is NOT human. McVeigh was not human either.

Humans make mistakes like walking in on a cheating spouse and killing them in a fit of rage, or in desperation they abandon a baby in a garbage can, or a thousand other things that humans can be driven to in extreme circumstances. Even a serial killer has a sickness or something to point to - McVeigh just doesnt have anything to indicate he is human.

He COULD have blown the building when it wasnt full of people and made the same point!

I cry every time I see footage, when I see scenes of the memorial with the little chairs. He killed babies.

He killed babies.

He is not human. Call it monster, call it evil, call it whatever you want, but he was not human. To allow him to continue to draw breath would not be justice.

My heart aches for the people of OK City, I hope you find peace someday.

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jab1,

I certainly wouldn’t/couldn’t be the person (or monster, if you will) that would be the one who physically tortured someone else**, just as I couldn’t be the one who committed the heinous crime in the first place.

But I don’t have any qualms about preventing the guilty party from going through any sort of hell on earth, either.

[Sub]** assuming that I am not personally/emotionally involved in the crime. If someone killed or raped my girlfriend or mother, I would gladly take a week off of work and use a blowtorch and screwdriver to spend loads of “quality time” witht he guilty party.[/sub]

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That’s not what I meant. My point is, that I have no problem with their suffering.

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No, THIS is what you meant: You want certain criminals to be tortured for the rest of their lives as long YOU don’t have to do it. You have no compassion for either the person(s) being tortured or the ones doing the torturing. If the torturer was not a monster before taking on the job, he would very likely become a monster before long.

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I was going to mention that bit about the 168-1 not being said by McVeigh, but it slipped my mind. But you totally nailed what I’ve been saying (and am getting tired of saying). There is no absolute difference between myself and McVeigh, just differences in degree.

In the past two days, I’ve heard… well, monstrous statements from people on this board. I won’t name any names, and I won’t quote them (board’s too slow), but paraphrased:

“I think we should have stuck some dynamite in him, lit the fuse in the middle of the desert, and let the buzzards take care of his remains.”

“He killed 168 people? We should have brought him to near-death and revived him 168 times before finally killing him.”

“We should stick him in a large room, naked, with all the relatives of the victims, and just walked away.”

Clothing such statements with rhetoric such as “justice” and “righteousness” belies their savagery.

But, if it makes you happy, then continue to think that you could NEVER kill anyone, and you’re totally different from monsters such as McVeigh… despite the fact that you’d pay money to brutally torture someone.

Quix

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Thanks for telling me what I meant.

You’re right that I have no compassion for the one being tortured, as long as his guilt is not in question.

I already said I would gladly do the torturing if someone I knew was killed or seriously harmed.

You may have a point about the prolonged effect on the one doing the torturing, so point conceded. Easy enough solution – Create a machine to do it.

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But I havent done anything illegal (well - I havent done anything really illegal). If they decided to snatch me up off the streets just for kicks, then yeah, that would be wrong. But if they snatched me up off the streets because I had been stalking, killing and eating the people who work at the 7-11 around the corner from my house, they yeah - then it would be ok to lock them up.

I’m not sure I see the connection between being against government sanctioned murder meaning that I am therefore also being against incarceration? I know this is a really late response (sorry about that, by the way) but Zev, if you are still floating around these here parts, maybe you could explain what your line of thinking on that was? (Sincerely - this isnt one of those “i dont get it because i disagree with you” kind of things.)

Love,
Sneeze