Wasted Lab Rat

Via NRO, a link to silly thinking by Richard Dawkins:

THE OBVIOUS objections to the execution of Saddam Hussein are valid and well aired. His death will provoke violent strife between Sunni and Shiite Muslims, and between Iraqis in general and the American occupation forces. This was an opportunity to set a good example of civilized behavior in dealing with a barbarically uncivilized man. In any case, revenge is an ignoble motive. If President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair are eventually put on trial for war crimes, I shall not be among those pressing for them to be hanged.

What a fine secular humanist Dick is. He won't be calling for the execution of the president.

But I want to add another and less obvious objection: Hussein's mind would have been a unique resource for historical, political and psychological research, a resource that is now forever unavailable to scholars.

....Hussein is not in the same league as Hitler, but, nevertheless, in a small way his execution represents a wanton and vandalistic destruction of important research data.

Right. We could study Saddam and then, once we knew what made him tick, we could maybe talk the next blood thirsty dictator out of it. Sure we could. Because people like Saddam must be motivated by something other than a desire for absolute power and inexhaustible riches. One thing the gallows did pretty much do though: it guaranteed that the next dictator won't be Saddam Hussein. When Dawkins shows up on the next dictator's doorstep, he'll be trying to dissuade the last dictator.

Anyway, here's where the antitheologian who couldn't tell that Mr. Garrison was a man really shows his intellect:

He should have been locked up, by all means. Kept him in jail for the rest of his life, to be sure. But to execute him was irresponsible. Hussein could have provided irreplaceable help to future historians of the Iran-Iraq war, of the invasion of Kuwait and of the subsequent era of sanctions culminating in the invasion. Uniquely privileged evidence on the American government's enthusiastic arming of Hussein in the 1980s is now snuffed out at the tug of a rope (no doubt to the relief of Donald Rumsfeld and other guilty parties; it is surely no accident that the trial of Hussein neglected those of his crimes that might — no, would — have implicated them).

It is not disputed that we aided Iraq in the Iran-Iraq war. We assumed that an Iranian victory would have been a bad thing. When you know that the government approved something like $200 million in arms sales to Iraq, why would you need Saddam to say, "Yeah, I got the stuff."? And how stupid do you have to be to assume that any input from Saddam would have historical value? He would tell you his side of the story. The Kuwaitis were stealing my oil. Iran stole my land. And Hitler would tell you those Jews died in an escape attempt. Insight. Yeah, Dick, kudos on your relentless pursuit of the truth.