Back at work

December 16th, 2003

I like the tail end of having a cold. Your nose goes all crusty and the bogeys and phlegm congeal slightly. The end effect is that of large bogeys that eject solidly and satisfyingly into your hanky, allowing you moments of clear, sniff-free beathing in the most pleasing manner.

But anyway - Saddam’s been captured, in case you weren’t aware (Which you were). It’s weird, but all the talk of what to do with him reminded me of an Eddie Izzard routine.

I remember a routine in which he was talking about the number of Russians who died in the second world war. He said if someone kills someone, then you go, “Oh you murderous bastard, straight to jail with you!” If someone kills two people, you go, “Two people?? You evil murderer! Get straight to jail, and never come back!” If a serial killer kills ten people, then you’re shocked and appalled, “Hang the bastard! No, hanging’s too good for ‘im!”

But if you hear that someone has murdered ten thousand people, then the number is all of a sudden too big. Your brain just can’t deal with the idea that someone has killed ten thousand people.

“You’ve killed ten thousand people?? Er… well done! Er… my word that’s a lot of people. You must get up very early in the morning indeed!”

Saddam murdered over ten thousand of his own people in his own country by deliberately deploying chemical weapons on civilians. And that’s just for starters. The palace of the end - his torture chambers were places of horrendous crimes.

Politicians, militiary commanders, civilians or anyone else who had stood in Saddams way, (Or looked like they might) ended up meeting very grisly fates indeed in a place where mutilation, rape and worse were used as a method of extracting confessions.

He has murdered unimaginable numbers of people including large numbers of his own friends and family. And it’s not only on his orders - Saddam has killed many people by his own hand. I haven’t even mentioned war.

So when you hear stories on the news asking, “What is the possibility of Saddam getting the death penalty?” it seems ridiculous. There is no punishment in the world that could ever meet the need for revenge that must be felt by the numerous families of his victims. Lock him up, give him the chair - it amounts to getting rid of him. It’s wonderful news to hear, but what happens to him next seems like discussing what kind of cherry to put on the cake. And talks of him having a fair trial, (which he should of course have,) seem ironically ill-fitting.

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