Saddam Hussein's Execution Leads to More Death

I am firmly against capital punishment. I think it's barbaric. The true test of our humanity is what we do when we are faced with the choice of either perpetuating the barbarism or breaking free from the cycle of death.

Unfortunately the U.S. government under the leadership of the Texacutioner, supported the recent actions by the Iraqi government to execute Saddam Hussein. I will never understand the need for people to satiate their blood-lust, regardless of how much death the person was responsible for...it's just not part of my wiring, I guess. What's wrong with locking them up for the rest of their lives, if you must have some type of retribution?

So much death. So many demi-gods parading around with fluid authority and power. So much ugly, rotten fruit being borne from the neo-con tree that has flourished in this dark era.

A day after Saddam's execution, a 10-year-old boy in Texas hanged himself from a bunk bed after watching a news report on the execution. Police in the Houston suburb of Webster said the boy, Sergio Pelico, tied a slipknot around his neck while on the bed but had not mean to kill himself.

"I don't think he thought it was real," Julio Gustavo, Sergio's uncle, said afterward. "They showed them putting the noose around his neck and everything. Why show that on TV?"

Something similar occurred in Turkey, where 12-year-old Alisen Akti hanged himself Wednesday from a bunk bed after watching TV footage. His father, Esat Akti, told a newspaper in the southeastern province of Mus that his son had been affected by the televised images.

"After watching Saddam's execution he was constantly asking 'How was Saddam killed?' and 'Did he suffer?'" Akti was quoted as saying. "These television images are responsible for my son's death."

Nine-year-old Mubassahr Ali, from the eastern Pakistan town of Rahim Yar Khan, died hours after Saddam when he also mimicked the ousted leader's execution, local police official Sultan Ahmed Chaudhry said.

"The ill-fated boy used a long piece of cloth, tied it with a ceiling fan and wrapped its other end around his neck. Then he stood on a chair and fell down," Chaudhry said.

In Yemen, at least two young boys died and another was injured in apparent imitations of Saddam's hanging.

One of the cases involved a 13-year-old junior high school student who hanged himself after watching Saddam's execution on television, a Yemeni security official said.

When will it end?

When we choose to break the cycle.