# Saddam Gets Death **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [November 5, 2006, 9:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/saddam-gets-death/379170 "2006-11-05T09:10:29Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Squink](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5e925/32.png) [@Squink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Squink)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2006, 8:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/saddam-gets-death/379170/41 "2006-11-05T20:33:06Z")
[QUOTE=Ryan\_Liam] Because the US is pretty much stamping it’s boot on Baghdad right? [/QUOTE] Well, did they resist our conquest, or did we kiss them to death? ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2006, 9:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/saddam-gets-death/379170/42 "2006-11-05T21:02:57Z")
A refresher on the calculus of death: Saddam killed 300-400K over 32 years. About half of that was in response to the 1991 uprising. So the rest (we’ll assume the upper estimate of 200K) was over the other 30 years. That’s less than 7000 a year. If our actions in order to prevent 7000 deaths a year result in a few hundred thousand extra deaths in less than 4 years, the answer to “was that good or bad from a humanitarian standpoint?” is pretty easy. Extenuating circumstances don’t matter; bringing Saddam to justice doesn’t make up for it. A course of action that brings one man to justice, but results in the deaths of many others, is as stupid as the _Naked Gun_ scene where they shoot a whole bunch of people in order to test bullet trajectories. Only that was a comedy film; this is real life, and horribly tragic. ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2006, 9:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/saddam-gets-death/379170/43 "2006-11-05T21:24:25Z")
Would that it were Osama. Yeah, who is that again? :dubious: ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2006, 9:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/saddam-gets-death/379170/44 "2006-11-05T21:31:45Z")
[QUOTE=Diogenes the Cynic] I think the sentence is barbaric, backwards and self-defeating. When is Bush’s trial? [/QUOTE] Couple of days. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2006, 9:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/saddam-gets-death/379170/45 "2006-11-05T21:37:02Z")
[QUOTE=Eleusis] We’ll see a new uprising for a few months, then, pretty much, **Bricker** ’s premonition will come true. [/quote] What is **Bricker** ’s prediction ? And for a new uprising to even be noticed, the present one(s) would need to _stop_. [QUOTE=Eleusis] Bush sucks, but Saddam sucked worse. Right? [/quote] Wrong; besides the body counts mentioned by others, Iraq is now a much worse place to live in general, and it’s only going to get worse for a long time. [QUOTE=Eleusis] p.s. $5k says a Democrat takes the White House in '08. [/QUOTE] We’ll see. If nothing else, it depends on how well the Republicans have rigged the elections; I’m already reading news stories about voting machines that keep producing voting errors, which by _sheer chance_ are always in the Republican’s favor. [QUOTE=Ryan\_Liam] Whilst not even considering the extenuating circumstance of why this has come about [/quote] There are none. The conquest was sheer evil on our parts. [QUOTE=Ryan\_Liam] and who are fighting against the Iraqi Government and the majority of the country. [/quote] The majority of the population ( rightfully and sensibly ) supports killing foreign troops. ---
**Author:** ![Cisco](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ccd318/32.png) [@Cisco](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cisco)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2006, 10:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/saddam-gets-death/379170/46 "2006-11-05T22:01:08Z")
**Ryan\_Liam** : Please do not use my words as a soapbox from which to make statements that are completely unrelated to said words. Get me? Thanks. ---
**Author:** ![scr4](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/59ef9b/32.png) [@scr4](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scr4)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2006, 10:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/saddam-gets-death/379170/47 "2006-11-05T22:56:45Z")
[QUOTE=Ryan\_Liam] But Saddams executions and repressions weren’t an extenuating circumstance, they were a natural part of his regime, as where the removal of that regime was an extenuating circumstance, because we didn’t understand fully how it was going to end up. [/QUOTE] I don’t even understand that sentence. Could you rephrase it? ---
**Author:** ![Largo62](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/45deac/32.png) [@Largo62](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Largo62)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2006, 12:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/saddam-gets-death/379170/48 "2006-11-06T00:18:57Z")
Ordinarily I oppose the death penalty because the standard of proof is just not high enough to ensure that an innocent is never executed. I don’t believe there is the slightest doubt about this asshole’s guilt, though, and I will watch his execution if it is possible to do so. Some comparisons have been made here between Saddam and GWB. Bush is corrupt, arrogant and stupid, but Saddam is just plain evil. When (I hope) the balance in the Congress changes on Tuesday, I will be very happy to see Bush and Cheney impeached for transgressions against the Constitution, but neither of them has done anything remotely deserving of a death penalty. A few years in a federal lockup would be just fine. ---
**Author:** ![jayjay](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jayjay/32/6765_2.png) [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2006, 12:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/saddam-gets-death/379170/49 "2006-11-06T00:20:50Z")
I’m assuming that Saddam has an appointment in Samarra, then? “SALAAM. CURRY?” ---
**Author:** ![Scylla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a5b964/32.png) [@Scylla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scylla)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2006, 12:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/saddam-gets-death/379170/50 "2006-11-06T00:55:25Z")
[QUOTE=RTFirefly] A refresher on the calculus of death: Saddam killed 300-400K over 32 years. About half of that was in response to the 1991 uprising. So the rest (we’ll assume the upper estimate of 200K) was over the other 30 years. That’s less than 7000 a year. If our actions in order to prevent 7000 deaths a year result in a few hundred thousand extra deaths in less than 4 years, the answer to “was that good or bad from a humanitarian standpoint?” is pretty easy. Extenuating circumstances don’t matter; bringing Saddam to justice doesn’t make up for it. A course of action that brings one man to justice, but results in the deaths of many others, is as stupid as the _Naked Gun_ scene where they shoot a whole bunch of people in order to test bullet trajectories. Only that was a comedy film; this is real life, and horribly tragic. [/QUOTE] How about the new math of morality? I am uncomfortable with the calculus of death or the economics of math murder… er mass murder. So, if you’re an evil dictator as long as you’re keeping your rate of murder and oppression at a rate below the human cost of removing you, you should be safe from removal and this is the **only** consideration that should be made in regard to this decision. I’ll wager the civil war killed people at a rate orders of magnitude above the rate that slavery was killing people. According to your “calculus of death” then this war should not have happened, the slaves should not have been freed. Do you also apply your calculus of death to the civil war? Do you maintain that it should not have been fought? In fact, is not your entire “calculus of death” argument nothing more than a thinly veiled attempt to defend slavery? (just kidding, couldn’t resist) Suppose, you take over a town which is made up of 10,000 blonde people and two hundred brunette people. Suppose you state your attention to murder all the brunette people over the course of a year. The military determines that it would cost three hundred lives to remove you from power and prevent the brunetticide. Having made this calculation we should then allow you kill everybody? I, for one would not allow you to get away with it. I could attack you at the end of December and spread the deaths out of over two calender years to support the economics of it, or… I could decide that the calculus of death is inherently stupid and do what needs to be done. * * * The war may or may not be justified, but you’re not going to find it with calculus. ps. You didn’t even use calculus, just simple arithmetic so you don’t even get points for truth in advertising. ---
**Author:** ![Scylla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a5b964/32.png) [@Scylla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scylla)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2006, 12:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/saddam-gets-death/379170/51 "2006-11-06T00:59:11Z")
As for the OP, I have real reservations about this. I have no doubt that Saddam is a bad guy deserving of much worse, but I was not especially impressed with that kangaroo court that passed as a trial. I think the process was severely compromised and runs the risk of creating a martyr. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2006, 12:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/saddam-gets-death/379170/52 "2006-11-06T00:59:25Z")
[QUOTE=Largo62] Some comparisons have been made here between Saddam and GWB. Bush is corrupt, arrogant and stupid, but Saddam is just plain evil. [/quote] To it’s victims, the differences between stupidity/corruption/arrogance and evil don’t matter, even assuming you’re right about Bush, _and_ that enough stupidity/corruption/arrogance doesn’t qualify as a form of evil anyway. [QUOTE=Largo62] I will be very happy to see Bush and Cheney impeached for transgressions against the Constitution, but neither of them has done anything remotely deserving of a death penalty. A few years in a federal lockup would be just fine. [/QUOTE] Promoting, excusing and possibly ordering torture, the death of tens of thousands _at least_, and laying waste to a country aren’t enough ? If executions are a valid form of punishment at all, they most certainly deserve to be. I doubt you’ll find a single person on Death Row in America who has done a thousandth as much damage. ---
**Author:** ![Don\_t\_fight\_the\_hypothetical](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/59ef9b/32.png) [@Don\_t\_fight\_the\_hypothetical](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Don_t_fight_the_hypothetical)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2006, 1:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/saddam-gets-death/379170/53 "2006-11-06T01:36:56Z")
[QUOTE=Scylla] So, if you’re an evil dictator as long as you’re keeping your rate of murder and oppression at a rate below the human cost of removing you, you should be safe from removal and this is the **only** consideration that should be made in regard to this decision. [/QUOTE] -If you are putting this out as the only option, yeah. There were other options. Options that would not have included the high death rate. Victims of the “human cost” won’t thank you for your either/or proposition. ---
**Author:** ![kaylasdad99](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kaylasdad99/32/3398_2.png) [@kaylasdad99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kaylasdad99)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2006, 2:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/saddam-gets-death/379170/54 "2006-11-06T02:02:35Z")
[QUOTE=Scylla] The war may or may not be justified, but you’re not going to find it with calculus. [/QUOTE] You don’t KNOW that. After all, as you point out, he wasn’t using calculus. Maybe someone who _does_ use calculus could actually find it. I vote “not”, btw, and I’m not pretending to have used calculus (or grasped calculus for that matter). ---
**Author:** ![Eleusis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f4b2a3/32.png) [@Eleusis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eleusis)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2006, 5:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/saddam-gets-death/379170/55 "2006-11-06T05:19:10Z")
[QUOTE=kaylasdad99] You don’t KNOW that. After all, as you point out, he wasn’t using calculus. Maybe someone who _does_ use calculus could actually find it. I vote “not”, btw, and I’m not pretending to have used calculus (or grasped calculus for that matter). [/QUOTE] Well, I do KNOW that he didn’t use Euclidean geometry either, but what fuck-all does it really matter? I didn’t call this post Euclidean geometry. ---
**Author:** ![Lissa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/85f322/32.png) [@Lissa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lissa)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2006, 5:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/saddam-gets-death/379170/56 "2006-11-06T05:41:14Z")
Was Hussein convicted of crimes against people outside his country? I thought it was just crimes against his own people. ---
**Author:** ![Orbifold](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/779978/32.png) [@Orbifold](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Orbifold)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2006, 11:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/saddam-gets-death/379170/57 "2006-11-06T11:16:37Z")
[QUOTE=kaylasdad99] After all, as you point out, he wasn’t using calculus. [/QUOTE] The word “calculus”, in addition to referring to a specific branch of mathematics, can also be used to mean just “a system of calculation/reasoning”. **RTFirefly** used the word correctly. For the record I’m both opposed to the death penalty on principle and utterly unsurprised by this verdict. ---
**Author:** ![Ryan\_Liam](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ryan_liam/32/3965_2.png) [@Ryan\_Liam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ryan_Liam)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2006, 7:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/saddam-gets-death/379170/58 "2006-11-06T19:24:44Z")
> [@](#): > > A refresher on the calculus of death: > > Saddam killed 300-400K over 32 years. About half of that was in response to the 1991 uprising. So the rest (we’ll assume the upper estimate of 200K) was over the other 30 years. That’s less than 7000 a year. > > If our actions in order to prevent 7000 deaths a year result in a few hundred thousand extra deaths in less than 4 years, the answer to “was that good or bad from a humanitarian standpoint?” is pretty easy. > > Extenuating circumstances don’t matter; bringing Saddam to justice doesn’t make up for it. A course of action that brings one man to justice, but results in the deaths of many others, is as stupid as the Naked Gun scene where they shoot a whole bunch of people in order to test bullet trajectories. Only that was a comedy film; this is real life, and horribly tragic. Well then, by using this logic, I can say defeating the Nazis was a huge waste of time since millions of people were killed by them in order to defeat them rather than just allowing Hitler to send a few thousand people to the death camps. Godwinising I know, but a valid point. ---
**Author:** ![RedFury](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ec9cab/32.png) [@RedFury](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RedFury)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2006, 7:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/saddam-gets-death/379170/59 "2006-11-06T19:55:45Z")
[QUOTE=Ryan\_Liam] Well then, by using this logic, I can say defeating the Nazis was a huge waste of time since millions of people were killed by them in order to defeat them rather than just allowing Hitler to send a few thousand people to the death camps. Godwinising I know, but a valid point. [/QUOTE] No asshole, not even close. As per usual, you little fascist bigot, you make about about as much sense as tits on a bull. Point being, monkey-boy, that the death rate and living conditions in Iraq were a thousand times better prior to your murderous, immoral and illegal Bushit invasion. I mean, **where the fuck do you get off comparing Saddam to Hitler** in terms of the threat each one posed? A Third-world dictator with a decimated military, no air force nor navy, compared to the the unbridled power of The Third Reich? Iraq couldn’t threaten _Haiti_ for fuck’s sake! Jesus H Christ on a pogo-stick…you get dumber by the post. One load your Momma should have swallowed. [Bush & Blair: The Iraq fantasy](http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/article1956548.ece) ---
**Author:** ![Giraffe](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/giraffe/32/129_2.png) [@Giraffe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Giraffe)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2006, 8:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/saddam-gets-death/379170/60 "2006-11-06T20:03:36Z")
[QUOTE=Ryan\_Liam] Well then, by using this logic, I can say defeating the Nazis was a huge waste of time since millions of people were killed by them in order to defeat them rather than just allowing Hitler to send a few thousand people to the death camps. Godwinising I know, but a valid point. [/QUOTE] Sure, if by “valid” you mean “really stupid”. WWII was not fought solely as a humanitarian mission, Germany was in fact a real threat to the security of our European allies if not the U.S. itself, and more than “a few thousand” people were sent to the death camps. Regarding Iraq, remember that invasion was not the only option available to us. If the deaths of Iraqis under Saddam in the past decade were of such a serious concern to us, I don’t see how creating a power vacuum in that region was the best way to improve the situation, compared with (e.g.) taking the time to start a serious international effort to improve human rights. Once you choose war over other options (including doing nothing), you have to look at the relative costs in lives to see if it’s worth the likely gains. Incidentally, does anyone know how many people Saddam’s government killed in the decade or so before the invasion, i.e. once he was under the sanctions? I can’t imagine it’s nearly as high as when he was slaughtering Kurds or Iranians in the 80’s (back before we had any interest in preserving the lives of innocent people in the area). I suspect that tens of thousands of people a year are now dying to keep Saddam’s government from killing a handful, which is really tragic. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/saddam-gets-death/379170.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/saddam-gets-death/379170.md?page=4)