Making Saddam a Martyr

That's what Don Surber rightly accuses The New York Times of doing. He also directs us to this fine essay by J. R. Dunn of American Thinker.

This more typical lefty behavior, indecisive second-guessing and hand-wringing, leading only to fecklessness. It's what has reduced the greatest power in world history to a bumbling, dithering, absent-minded codger.

The correct questions for a tribunal should be is has the state demonstrated by competent evidence that the defendant guilty and what is the appropriate punishment. For the Times, there can never be enough evidence or enough wickedness to justify capital punishment. Thus any decision to hang such an evil man would always be a rush, and by opposing the death penalty, people like the Times' editors have already ruled themselves out as incompetent on the issue of whether the decision was too hasty.

As Surber notes,

The question is not why the rush? Rather it is why was this not done in 1991?