You say you want an execution...

Just three points.

1. While Saddam was sentenced to death, the actual verdict hasn't been completed yet, but should be issued later this week. As if this trial needed to look more like a sham...

2. Hurrying the sentence, before the verdict is actually ready, makes for convenient political timing. But I couldn't possible imagine the Bush administration deliberately perpetrating an outrage against justice.

3. The death penalty is totalitarian. The police execution in the photo above and the sentence-without-verdict in Saddam's case illustrate the point. There are states in which the sovereign holds the citizens' lives in his hands, and there are those in which the state does not have the legal authority to kill its citizens. The officer on the streets of Saigon, the farcical court in Baghdad, or the district court on North Limestone are different in degree, not in kind.