The Iraqis can learn...

sorry..but did theat really happen? Seriously?

Sure did....guy got decapitated.

Man..I'm glad I don't watch ALL the news. Ggotta be the most barbaric stuff in Middle East and Iraq. How can the world go on the way it's going?

Sorry..sometimes I get so discouraged when I hear that crap.

We all do!

That's a shame. Good there making progress though.
No, not really.

I have been wondering, seriously, if that happening would make the experience of being hanged more awful for the victim, or not?


Would such a thing (which I gather happens when the weight of person/length of rope equation isn't worked out properly?) kill you more rapidly before it tore your head off, or would you feel that happening to you?

Before I really thought about it, I gathered that hangpeople were careful about that to avoid upsetting the masses.....but this has made me think about it in more detail than I ever wanrted to.

For what it's worth, I've heard the Guillotine is the most humane form of capital punishment. I can only assume that means fraction of time between life and death you're in shock. Worse is if the ropes to short and you have to strangle... but if they're humane they'll hang by your legs to help you out.

I can't even imagine how that could happen.

I wonder if the guy had an experience similar to the one in AN OCCURRENCE AT OWL CREEK BRIDGE?

Twilight Zone?
Gustav: was that an episode of Twilight Zone..seems to me I recall seeing that a few times.

Exactly, Ambrose Bierce was a Sunni apologist.

It was both the short story by Bierce, a Cannes best short subject award winner as independent film, and a 1964 special episode of Twilight zone

quote="OCCOM BILL"]That's a shame. Good there making progress though.
No, not really.[/quote]

I stand corrected, Bill.

What I guess I meant was…all of us who are not so committed to an ideology that we are willing to be subhuman in defense of it.

No, not really.[/quote]

I stand corrected, Bill.

What I guess I meant was…all of us who are not so committed to an ideology that we are willing to be subhuman in defense of it.[/quote]


************************************************

The quotes in the above are all mixed up.......this is my response to Frank's response to Bill's response to Frank.

Subhuman feels right....but probably isn't accurate.


It's all too human.


Worst of human, perhaps?

From today's New York Times:

BAGHDAD, Jan. 15 ?- Iraq's turbulent effort to reckon with the violence of its past took another macabre turn on Monday when the execution of Saddam Hussein's half brother ended with the hangman's noose decapitating him after he dropped through the gallows trapdoor.

Ali al-Dabbagh, right, and Bassam al-Husseiny, an adviser to the Iraqi prime minister, attended a news conference about the hangings.

An official video played to a small group of Iraqi and Western reporters more than 13 hours after the hanging showed Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti, former head of Mr. Hussein's secret police, standing nervously on the trapdoor in a flame-orange jumpsuit of the kind used at the American detention center at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba, his head and mustache shaved. Beside him, praying feverishly in identical garb, stood the other condemned man, Awad Hamad al-Bandar, the former chief judge of Mr. Hussein's revolutionary court.

After executioners in full-face balaclavas pulled black hoods over the two men's heads, tightened nooses around their necks and pulled the lever opening the trapdoors, both fell like weights. But the hangmen's calculations of weight, gravity and the momentum needed to snap their necks ?- a grim science that has produced detailed "drop charts" used for decades in hangings around the world ?- appeared, in Mr. Ibrahim's case, to have gone seriously awry.

Iraqi officials said their execution procedures had been exhaustively reviewed after the Hussein execution on Dec. 30, which culminated with the former dictator facing a volley of verbal abuse from members of the execution party as he waited with the noose around his neck. The officials said that their goal was to prevent a recurrence of those scenes, which were sectarian in nature and set off a storm of protest around the world, and that they had consulted with Western "humanitarian organizations" to get the procedures right.

Under pressure from American officials, the hanging of Mr. Ibrahim and Mr. Bandar, who were sentenced in November for their roles in the torture and execution of scores of Shiites in the town of Dujail after an alleged assassination attempt against Mr. Hussein in 1982, had been delayed for more than two weeks while the Maliki government drew up new guidelines for executions.

American and Iraqi officials said the aim was to prevent a recurrence of the scenes that turned Mr. Hussein, a mass murderer in the eyes of many Iraqis, into something of a sympathetic figure at his death and, across the Arab world, into an icon of dignity and courage.

Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki had assured the Americans that instead of having 25 witnesses, as at the Hussein hanging, only about half as many would attend. Moreover, he pledged to exclude any known loyalists of the Shiite militia leader Moktada al-Sadr, a polarizing figure whose name was invoked by guards to antagonize Mr. Hussein.

With those assurances, the Americans agreed to release the two men, and flew them by helicopter from the American detention center at Camp Cropper to the same execution spot used for Mr. Hussein, at the former headquarters of the Istikhbarat, the deposed government's military intelligence agency.

But events at the gallows in the predawn hours of Monday had something of the same surreal and freakish quality that enveloped the Hussein hanging.

Iraqi officials who attended the hanging said the calculation in the case of Mr. Ibrahim, a 55-year-old of medium height and build, had allowed for a "drop" of eight feet ?- too much, according to at least one United States Army manual ?- and about that amount of thick yellow rope could be seen coiled at Mr. Ibrahim's feet before the hanging.

The video showed his head being snapped off as the rope went taut, and ending up, still inside the hood, lying in the pit of the gallows about five feet from his headless body.

Mr. Bandar could be seen dangling from the rope above Mr. Ibrahim, whose body was lying on its chest on the floor of the dark, dank pit, blood pooling beside his severed neck. The silent, three-minute video then ended abruptly, with officials saying they would run it only once, and not show it in public again.

To ensure no illicit copies of the video were made with cellphone cameras, as happened at the execution of Mr. Hussein, reporters attending the showing had their cellphones taken away by hawk-eyed Iraqi security men.


Ali al-Dabbagh, spokesman for Mr. Maliki who supervised the details of Mr. Hussein's execution, said officials wanted to ensure that Mr. Ibrahim and Mr. Bandar died instantly, and were not left dangling at the end of the hanging rope for 15 to 20 minutes before they were asphyxiated, which he said had been a deliberate tactic used in thousands of hangings under Mr. Hussein. That seemed to suggest that the executioners had deliberately allowed for a long "drop" for the two men hanged Monday, to be sure their necks were broken cleanly by their fall.

I stand corrected, Bill.

What I guess I meant was…all of us who are not so committed to an ideology that we are willing to be subhuman in defense of it.[/quote]


************************************************

The quotes in the above are all mixed up.......this is my response to Frank's response to Bill's response to Frank.

Subhuman feels right....but probably isn't accurate.


It's all too human.


Worst of human, perhaps?[/quote]

I know what you mean. Sad. Very sad!

Subhuman? Because I'll shed no tears over the extermination of a mass murderer? Then I guess I qualify.<shrugs>

Decapitating the prisoner that you want to hang is not unheard of, but an experienced executioner will take measures to avoid it. If the idea is to break the prisoner's neck rather than just strangle him, then the prisoner has to drop between 4 to 8 feet before the rope snaps taught. In order to calculate the precise length of the drop, an executioner will use a drop table.

If the drop is too short, there won't be sufficient force to break the prisoner's neck, and he'll just dangle there until he suffocates. Too long of a drop, however, and the force might be enough to pop the prisoner's head like a Pez dispenser. The Iraqis may still be unfamiliar with the mechanics of the whole thing, as it seems that folks in the Middle East much prefer the slow strangle method rather than the neck-breaking method of hanging. Presumably, with lots of Saddam's relatives left, there will be ample opportunity for the Iraqi executioners to perfect their technique.

For more information on how you too can hang someone, click here.

Bush on the hanging of saddam.

"looked like kind of a revenge killing"