Unless you've had your head in the sand over the past few days, you've probably noticed that they captures Saddam Hussein.
One aspect fo the capture that intrigues me is the idea of what to do next. If you've heard the Vatican's ideas about the capture, you've no doubt heard them repeat their opposition to the death penalty. But my question at this point is, "If you don't kill him, what do you do?"
I suppose that torture is out of the question. Eliminating the death penalty as an option kind of puts the idea of torture out, too. I really don't think that the pope is advocating torture rather than capital punishment. So is the alternative prison?
Who is going to make a home for Hussein in their prisons? The US? Aren't we enough of a terrorist target? I guess it would be too much to ask for Iraq to hold their own prisoner. The only people who have weapons over there are people on his side, willing to break him out. And us, of course, but I plan for the significant portion of our occupation of Iraq to end with the current presidency. Like, 2004.
I heard on the radio this morning that they're trying to extract information from him about where he has hidden weapon stores in Iraq. I wonder if they will successfully get this info from him. And what they will have to do to him to get it. As far as I know, he's not being held somewhere where the people holding him would be accountable for losing a couple of his fingers, for example. And it's not like we're big fans of the Geneva convention, pointing to those "terrorists" they're still holding in Guantanamo.
But I would really like to hear the Vatican's idea of an alternative punishment for this man. Maybe they'd like to imprison him? I'm sure they have some dungeons of their own under Vatican City.
