Will This *Never* End? (More from McVeigh)

[pldennison]

From Bud Welch, father of 23-year-old Julie Welch, killed in the bombing:

When my daughter, Julie, was killed, I joined a “club” that I wish had no members: The price of admission is too high. I know the pain of losing a loved one because of a senseless act of violence . . . The execution of Timothy McVeigh will not bring back Julie or her colleagues, nor will it end the grieving for any one of the victims of the Oklahoma City bombing.

When we take Tim McVeigh out of that cage to execute him, it isn’t going to bring Julie Marie back.

I had always been opposed to the death penalty but, during the first five weeks after the bombing, I wanted Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols executed. I could have done it with my bare hands . . . One day, I went down to the bomb site. I sat under an old elm tree near where Julie used to park her car. I asked myself the question, ‘How would it help me the day that Tim McVeigh and Terry Nichols were tried, convicted and executed?’ I knew then that it wouldn’t benefit me. I remembered the time when Julie and I were driving back from Milwaukee during her junior year of college. We were driving across the state of Iowa and listening to an all-news radio station. They had told a story of yet another execution in Texas. Julie said, ‘Dad, that makes me sick what they’re doing in Texas. All they’re doing is teaching hate to their children.’ I didn’t think much about it at the time, but after Julie was killed, it echoed in my mind every day. Julie was so strongly opposed to the death penalty. Her beliefs led her to join Amnesty International when she was 16. I finally realized that the death penalty was nothing more than revenge and hate - and revenge and hate are exactly why Julie and 167 others are dead.

[gobear]

I’m opposed to the death penalty, and especially if it means giving McVeigh what he wants. He wants to die a martyr’s death as an inspiration to the right-wing gun-nuts; I say deny it to him.

If you really want to see McVeigh dead, just place him in the prison’s general population; it worked well for Jeffrey Dahmer. I just don’t think the state should have the right to kill, even someone as loathsome as McVeigh.

I also agree with other posters that the erosion of the right to due process as evidenced by the FBI’s clear disregard for the disclosure rule is far more frightening for the future of this nation than any number of truck bombs. Besides, why should we give the anti-government rantings of the militia loons any credence by trying to railroad McVeigh through withholding documents?

I see nothing wrong with lawyers calling him Mr. McVeigh; referring to him as “the vile murderer, McVeigh” might be seen as the weensiest bit prejudicial, don’t you think? I don’t know about the rest of you, but I prefer to live in a country where even the worst of us is treated with fairness and decency.

Good posting, PLD.

[Tranquilis]

*Originally posted by goboy *
…He wants to die a martyr’s death as an inspiration to the right-wing gun-nuts…

<Italics mine>

Watchit. I’m one of those “gun nuts” and I find nothing (as you may have noted) inspiring about this piece of waste. Neither do my fellows at the range, or the numerous (a couple of hundred, at least) other gun-owning Constitutionalists with whom I’m aquainted, or for that matter, anyone else I’ve met, find him inspirational. We all find him pathetic, scary, vicious, callous, and sick. If you wanna slam McVeigh, please, be my guest. If you wanna rant about gun owners, start a new thread, but don’t you dare link us to that piece of trash.

[gobear]

Tranquilis, I’m shocked at you! I said gun nut, not ** not gun-owner**; surely you know they’re not synonymous? Unless you’re a right-wing loon who prints his own money, tries to sue the local sheriff in a make-believe court, believes that a Jewish/Communist/Trilateralist/ Freemason conspiracy secretly runs the world, regularly checks the sky for black helicopters, and owns about a zillion semi-automatics, then I wasn’t talking about you! Owning guns and firing a few rounds at the target range is one of our rights as Americans.

I support owning guns; I don’t support the kind of right-wing goons that spawned the likes of McVeigh.

[Tranquilis]

*Originally posted by goboy *
Tranquilis, I’m shocked at you! I said gun nut, not ** not gun-owner

Ah, I see. My appologies, sir.

Within the groups I hangout, we frequently refer to ourselves as Gun Nuts. McVeigh is radical loony, whom also supports gun ownership. I have a knee-jerk reflex when people link his firearms views with his vile behavior. Again, my appologies, and I’ll see a doctor about that nasty reflex in my knee…

[Tranquilis]

Preview is my friend. It Maketh me avoid silly errors…

Mods? A little help please?

[Arden_Ranger]

*Originally posted by Saint Zero *
**
On the other hand, I can halfway sympathise with the guy for wanting to get it over with, if only to get away from the press and everything.
**

Oh, he loves the press. From McVeigh’s Captive Audience:

“He really has enjoyed this soapbox he never had when he was just an ex-Army guy living on the gun circuit,” said Phil Bacharach

During the six years he spent in tight security, McVeigh’s writings were published in national magazines, including letters he sent to Bacharach that appeared in Esquire magazine. Barbara Walters visited him, and hundreds of other journalists from around the world vied to get in to see him. He made the cover of Time and Newsweek and appeared on national television in a “60 Minutes” interview.

High-powered lawyers were at his beck and call. He received stacks of letters, many from overseas. Some women who wrote to him enclosed nude photographs of themselves.

Feh.

pldennison:

While Mr. Welch is obviously a good hearted and forgiving man, he also speaks to McVeigh’s father on a regular basis, he is in the minority in his feelings about this among the victim’s families and the survivors and it wouldn’t make a difference if he wasn’t. The Court says he deserves to die.

[romansperson]

I think I will probably regret posting to this thread, but I have been thinking about it a lot.

My husband is a former Navy man. I worked for the Navy as a civilian for 12 years. So watching this whole McVeigh thing has captured our interest, being a Federal thing and all.

My husband is virulently pro-capital punishment. I am a bit more temperate on the subject. When we were still living in the state of Virginia, I applied to be a witness to an execution. Regular citizens can do that. I guess the state considers it a way to keep themselves, and the citizenry, honest. I applied back in the day when electrocution was the standard means of execution in that state. Virginia is quite serious about its capital punishment laws, and so I knew it wouldn’t be a years-long wait if I applied.

I figured if I was going to be pro-capital punishment, I ought to take a look at how it happens. Well, not too long after I applied, the state changed its method to “lethal injection.”

I know about “lethal injection.” I’d applied that to a couple of my pets when they were old and sick and in pain. Their death was quick, quiet and painless. I felt awful being the one to make the decision, but considering the circumstances, it was much better than allowing the courses of the illnesses to complete themselves.

I didn’t want to see the execution of a human after that, if that was going to be the method. I’d seen it. I know it. I recognize that method as an act of mercy, not as an act of punishment. Human killers that act in a methodical and cold-blooded way have not earned a swift and painless method of death. That method of death is much more humane than the natural deaths that befall many of our loved ones, who have never done anything to deserve the agony and suffering, unrelieved by any acts of mercy, that befall them at the ends of their lives.

Yet being merely human, we cannot direct Fate or God or whoever in inflict Timothy McVeigh with a horrible, slow, and painful death. I cannot give Timothy McVeigh bone cancer, or a brain tumor, or anything else that would befit the suffering he has caused.

My husband says we should boil McVeigh in his own piss. While this certainly brings some fantasies to life, we know in this country we are unable to bring such a thing to pass. We are considered a “civilized” country, and as such, these sorts of things cannot be considered.

Personally, for this person at this time, I think that indifference should be the emotion (if one could call it that) closely held. I’d like to see Timothy McVeigh banished to a sound-proofed cell without any natural light. Hearing no sounds and seeing no sights, he could be fed a meager meal once a day or so. And forgotten about. No interviews, no cameras. Nothing. And just allowed to rot. Perhaps a brief mention could be made of his natural death, whenever it occurs.

Always remember that the opposite of love is not hate; it’s indifference. The best thing that could happen in healing for this whole country is for us to just move on and forget Timothy McVeigh. I’m not sure his execution will result in a complete lack of caring about his fate. Perhaps just locking him away and never thinking about him again would.

[Sterra]

He welcomed the death penalty. I never saw him depressed. He’s getting what he wants."

I think we should lock him up with a couple of psychologists whose only purpose is to make him regret his actions.

[Tranquilis]

*Originally posted by Sterra *
**I think we should lock him up with a couple of psychologists whose only purpose is to make him regret his actions. **

I see no need to torture innocent psychologists. McVeigh’s a mad dog. Put him down and be done with it.