As 2006 crawled to a sad ending, we had two new low points to mark.

The first was the 3,000th dead American in Iraq. Traditionally, there are 10 wounded soldiers for every 1 killed in combat, but with improvements in body armor, the ratio may now be 20 to 1. So, add another 30,000 to 60,000 wounded Americans to the toll. And, don’t forget the more than 100,000 Iraqis killed in combat and uncountable numbers killed or injured during the occupation and civil war.

The second is the execution of Saddam Hussein. Even as Americans work through our many human rights organizations to end the death penalty at home, we see it applied by our friends in Iraq. If anyone ever deserved to die for his crimes it is indeed Saddam. But, somehow the specter of a government having gained complete control over a person through imprisonment then deciding to kill him turns my stomach.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 1st, 2007 at 3:51 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.