by James Glaser
December 30, 2006

I have to ask what the hurry is. Yes, we all know Saddam Hussein is a bad man, and if you are not pro-life, you might even think he should be hung, but why now, and why so quick?

Would it be so bad to keep him alive until our troops left Iraq? That might save some American troops from retaliation. Also, why the heck are we killing the man in the Green Zone? To an Iraqi, the Green Zone is the American Zone. They know we are the ones killing Saddam, but do we have to make it so obvious?

All of this makes me wonder—could we be pressing the new Iraqi government to hang Saddam right away, so he has no time to talk? Up until now he has been in our custody, and we could control everything that the world heard from the man.

What if the Iraqis kept Saddam for a while and let the world's media interview him. Who knows what secrets he might talk about?

Saddam Hussein was "our boy" for a couple of decades. What weapons did we give him? What intelligence did we provide? Like we did for the dictators in South America, did we teach Saddam's secret police how to torture?

There are a lot of reasons why Washington wants Saddam dead before he can talk about his time in our employ.

Will killing Saddam make Iraq safer for our troops? That should be the most important thought right now.

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