Trent

If those reports are true, it is a tragedy. Very sad. This just gets my goat a little so I have to digress... How do you determine that a nation has asked to be liberated? Do you listen to the minority of people who are oppressed, or should it take a majority ignoring the "little people"? Or should we only accept a vote asking for help, which would surely work in brutal dictatorships, right? Does the UN have a "Free Us" hotline that people can call? I've asked this before here and no one had a good answer. I think people just like to throw out the "they didn't ask to be liberated" thing because it makes their anti-war stance sound better. Keep in mind, there are people in Iraq and Iraqis in diaspora that did ask for Iraq to be rid of Saddam. Oh, hello again!

On UPN they're running a WWE event that was held in Iraq. That's wrasslin' for all you non-rednecks. If you caught any of it so far, I think it's a really great thing that they're doing. All motives for publicity aside, the troops seem super into it and Vince McMahon gave them a very very nice thank you, in that WWE kinda way. As cheesey as it may be, I just thought that was really cool of them to do that for our troops who won't be home for Christmas. Oh and the troops booed the negativity in the media. They also just booed the "French" wrassler who walked in waving the French flag. How fun! Oh, hello again!

3 convienient stores in my area, that I buy gas and Red Bulls from, have Christmas tunes being played over their PAs. All 3 are run and owned by Indian and Pakistani guys. I asked 2 of them why they played Christmas songs since so many places are choosing to be so secular coupled with the fact that they are not Christian, but in fact devout Hindus and Muslims. Both of them gave similar answers. They said they loved America and that Christmas, while not part of their beliefs, was a great holiday for many Americans. They thought it was outstanding to see so many people celebrating their faith, even if it wasn't their own. Like many people I'm sure, they did not care if it was God, Allah, or whoever that people prayed to... as long as it was some kind of faith that helped people be more caring and kind. Incidentally, this was also part of the reason they decided to come to the US. They understood that Christianity is a big part of the US culture, and they also understood that they would be free to worship as they pleased. Welcome to America. We need more understanding people like this... it is too bad that people born and raised here can't see it like these guys did. Merry Christmas! Oh, hello again!

Being in Houston, I remember seeing Johnson Space Center making announcements about Santa's progress. What's the big deal? It's fun for kids. Besides, I bet a weatherman or 2 in your area will do the same. Are they in on this vast conspiracy of gov't lies? Oh, hello again!

Since the death penalty, while justifiable in this and other cases, costs taxpayers too much. I'd prefer to see this scum in prison forever, but subject to having his feces surgically removed from time to time by Bubba and his sharpened toothbrush. Oh, hello again!

Good point! I guess we'll have to launch ourselves into unoccupied space. That might pollute quite a bit, however.... ah fuck it... let the cavemen and dolphins deal with it, after all, they're getting the whole world back! Oh, hello again!

Ahhh my first convert! No, we can't jump into caves... we've gone down the path of "progress" too far to return to the purity of the cavemen. Besides, we'd just by "occupiers" in THEIR caves. Can't have that. To the ocean with you! Oh, hello again!

Why doesn't anyone cry for the caveman? Our so called "progress" has destroyed a truly eco-friendly culture that was a part of the land before any nation-state could lay claim to it. Return the land to the cavemen! Everyone, jump into the ocean as soon as possible! Oh, hello again!

I'm glad you spent so much time researching to respond to me, on a sunday no less. My question is how do you figure out what it costs for the state to have a trial? That means any trial. Of course, death penalty cases are what we talk about here. Answers I was looking for, look like what Phree has stated. (did I already say this?) I wanted to know, from a business analysis type of framework, how those costs were decided. It is a technical question that you're trying to turn into an argument about what I think. Quite silly to do. BUT... in the interests of shutting you up about what I think (since you're the expert on my thoughts)... I know that death cases cost more than a non death case (regardless of incarceration costs), and thanks to the more informative posts, I know why. Like I said originally, I hadn't put too much thought into the math there and wanted some input. I asked a few additional questions with some of my initial thoughts so that people could have some specific answers. You could have just answered the question instead of throwing accusations and babbling about my political leanings. You don't like my skepticism on this subject, but you'll tell me that blindly accepting a party line on something is stupid? Come on. You want to get the death penalty case outlawed? You'd better have more than just a moral argument before you take it to a governor or state legislature. If you walk in saying, "I know it costs more, I just know it." That won't be good enough. You'll have to SHOW that it does. Some people have already done this and I want to know how. At the end of the day, if you want to know what I think about a subject, ask. Don't just assume you know something about someone you've never met. But if you want to keep arguing about what I'm thinking, and maybe not posting, go ahead... you'll be wrong. Have another nice day. Oh, hello again!

Clearly you don't like having words put in your mouth. So now you know what it's been like having to listen to you tell me what I know, think and understand... on top of telling me I'm ignorant and undeducated countless times. Once you began insinuating that other people, not just me, were ignorant and uneducated, it ceased to be a nice discussion. That happened a while ago. If YOU took the time to see through your rage and read what I've said, you'd see that I never said we shouldn't understand our enemies. I said we don't have to understand someone's motivations to know that their actions are wrong. And yes, that may be somewhat ethnocentric but when it comes to some things it makes little difference. Honestly, I don't think YOU're a traitor. I'm glad there are people like you doing whatever it is you do (you've hinted at it, so I can only guess). But my original post and opinion stands. People who do think that those guys are "freedom fighters" doing their patriotic duty are deluded... for the reasons I've mentioned time and time again. And, like it or not, many many people have decided that these terrorists are the good guys, and their opinions will not be swayed, just as you can't sway my opinion that the massacre of the Indians was wrong. And again, you top it all of with more venom. If you took my comments that personally, then I apoligize. If this were the real world, I wouldn't "press charges" with the DZ.com police to ban you. I can take an insult and give em just the same. But if you think since I'm not in the service or directly connected to the war that I should not have an opinion, you might re-think reading or posting on internet forums. I'm here to talk about things. Why are you here? Oh, hello again!

Your arguments to my person are a joke. Get over yourself. I haven't spent a whole lot of time pondering the death penalty so before I decide anything I want to know some things. Is that to complex for you to understand? But hey, if you want to attack people asking questions, go ahead... it just makes a statement about yourself. And you have failed to understand the question from the start. I won't restate it again since you should be able to go to post one and figure it out. Asking questions is contesting? If you had a point to make, right or wrong, you've lost it because you're acting like I posed the question to debate you. As much as your psychic powers have told you that may be true, you're wrong. My question has been better answered by people (including sometimes arch-nemesis Kallend) who have responded in a mature and informational manner. I never said I was looking to shave costs anywhere, just figure out how expenses were being calculated. Since you're answering (with some venom) questions I never asked and attempting to put words in my mouth, I'd say that there's definitely someone here who is more likely building strawmen than me. Then why do we see them often quoted? 800 million. 2.6 million. 1.1 billion. And if the maximum punishment was life in prison, would you be more okay with innocent people being sentenced? I bet there would be plenty of appeals if life without parole was the absolute max. To many (even here), life in prison would be worse than death... should we accept a lesser court process because we're not killing someone? Have a nice day. Oh, hello again!

While there have been some decent answers so far. That was the clearest and most to the point yet. So I'm gathering that, basically, the costs that are stated when giving death penalty case costs are more a combination of "opportunity costs" (for taking time from the DAs and Judges) and actual costs of hiring defense counsel, paying for lab work, and expert testimony. I wonder, if defense bills are so high, would it be more economical to have a public defender's office, opposite the DA? Is that even allowed? Anyway, good answer. I see that the math may be oversimplified in most cases... but I also see how the number is much higher than a "normal" trial would be. [Aside] One interesting thing I read in the link from Kallend... the Illinois Capital Punishment Comission found that because the death penalty put additional scrutiny on a case... it was more likely that the accused would be found innocent in appeal. So, in a twisted way, the DP has saved a few lives from wrongful convictions or death. Strange side effect, but it makes sense. Oh, hello again!

If you have a problem answering my questions, just say so. I'm asking them because I want to know... for you to presume otherwise is asinine. You don't know me, so don't talk like you do. If you can't respond without crying that I have an agenda, then maybe your answers aren't good enough. If you don't know the answers, don't answer. And no, your DZ answer isn't the same thing . A DZ would be a PROFIT center, a court system is a COST center no matter how you slice it. I'm pretty sure they'll either have exactly as much staff as they need, or not enough. Staff will always be added due to the growing caseload, but what of that is directly resulting from DP cases? So I've already acknowledged that I can see how having to hire more staff to keep under the time requirements for trials makes sense... and I see that DP cases require a lot of trial time. But I'm not sure how it adds up to numbers like Kallend posted of 2.6M... so I asked. You're the only one trying to be confrontational about it now. Oh, hello again!

GUESS WHAT?? I learned that the Indians were brutally massacred. I learned that some settlers were also brutally massacred. I came to my own conclusion, while benefitting from the fact that "we" won, that what happened to the Indians was wrong. Very similarly, I can conclude that what the Nazi party was doing in Europe was wrong, what Saddam did to his people, and what the terrorists are doing to their own people is wrong. Guess your "winners write the books" doesn't always hold up. Some people think for themselves. You've already made your decision, the "freedom fighters" are the good guys to you. You've made that clear. It won't matter who writes the books to many people, they'll already have decided. But we didn't invade England and force democracy on them did we? We didn't do that to any other countries that are strong democracies today, did we? So tell me, would that have eventually happened without the American Revolution? Then you'd have people in other countries saying "Gee imperialism was the wrong way to go." And it wouldn't have anything to do with where I'm sitting now. So wait, we DO change our tactics by understanding our enemies? But we DON'T because that'd be lowering ourselves to their level? Understanding how the enemy will fight in open combat and politically will help us predict their moves, which will help us combat their moves, or take those moves away in the first place. Acting on this information is not lowering ourselves to their level, it is being flexible and realistic. I never said we should blow up crowds of Iraqis at water trucks because, hey they could be bad guys. I never said we should take terrorist hostages and cut their heads off to show the others what they had coming. You don't seem to understand that reacting to the enemy tactics doesn't mean resorting to the enemy tactics. Either way, this is a HUGE drift from what I originally posted. Terrorists in Iraq kill more of their own people than US troops. For someone who should know better, calling them "freedom fighters" is despicable. Someone just needs to make sure that the people in the mid east start to see that these fucks are killing their own people, and if they came to actual power... would probably kill more if they weren't in the same branch of Islam. Oh, hello again!

Is there a link to that study, if it is available online? I'd like to see how they did the math.... it'd help answer some of my questions. Oh, hello again!

Your example of a DZ doesn't work here since the objective of the court process isn't to make money. Instead, lacking the appropriate staff (which I'm sure is almost always the case with DAs offices) lengthens the wait for trials to see a courtroom. Contrary to what you might think, I'm not trying to argue that it's cheaper to kill them... because I don't know if it is. I just want to find out how the math works (and it seems there's more than a few ways) when people tell me that killing someone costs X million more than life sentences. Phree made a good illustration that lengthy trials, like death penalty cases (but certainly not ONLY death cases), place a time and resource burden on the DA and legal system that will eventually require them to hire more staff to maintain that "pesky" expedient trial thing. But even then, it is impossible to get exact numbers of exactly how that increases costs to taxpayers. I see how some people account for it, but I can see that others could easily argue that their methodology doesn't 100% stack up as well. Thanks for all the answers though, I'm learning! Oh, hello again!

I fully understand man hours. I was a consultant in my past life. The same thing applied there too however. I was paid a salary, regardless of how I long I worked on any one project. My employer, because a project went over estimated time, did not incur any more REAL costs except that I was not available for another project. Now, in consulting that costs a bit because if we don't get on a project, we could lose it. For the DAs, don't they have quite a backlog and take the cases as they can? I understand that a case may have used up more man-hours, but the end result of that would not necessarily be an additional real cost to taxpayers. And as far as increasing the goals for more death penalty cases (not that I think that's a great idea), wouldn't that simply lengthen the time it took to get people to trial up until a point where the HAD to hire more DAs? Oh, hello again!

So the DA's have more work to do, but they're on salary so they'd be getting paid no matter what. Are the investigators used by them private or police force detectives? If it is mainly police, they're also on salary and getting paid regardless of the investigation. Now this might lead to fewer available resources for other work, that makes sense. I guess I just want to better understand how a trial, no matter the length or burden of proof required, can be said to be costing taxpayers more... other than just tying up available resources which requires the hiring of more police, DAs, etc. It would seem that that kind of thing would happen regardless if it were a death case or not, the gap would just be filled by multiple additional cases. But I'm still asking, so I appreciate your patience here...

So what do you call the foreigners in Iraq who are fighting against the Iraqi and American forces? So, we should ignore genocides and serious brutal dictators, hell even terrorists since this could very well be part of their culture? Like I said, it doesn't take a degree in philosophy or a job in intelligence to know what is wrong. Of course you could debate the moral position of the Roman Gaul wars today. Does it make a difference now? No. You could go on to say that this war will eventually make no difference as well since the sun will probably set on the human race at some point. We're talking about today and what we're doing now. But what were the revolutionaries fighting for? A free and independant state, democracy. Apparently that was the way to go since much of the world adopted it since. Would tyranny under an empire been better just because the Brits may have won? History books, no matter who wrote them, do not change the intrisic "rightness" or "wrongness" of a conflict, they just allow the victor to explain themselves. So we'll fight how we fight, according to our standards, no matter what? Wouldn't that make it almost pointless to understand our enemies? You're right, this conflict won't be resolved by simple military force. It will take the Iraqi people getting together to decide that they've had enough of small groups trying to determine their destiny for them. Right now, our troops are fighting these radicals so that average Iraqis can have a say in their own government in free elections. Unfortunately, it's hard for them to see that when they're constantly bombarded with propaganda from here and their own media claiming that the US wants to control Iraq in an imperialistic fashion. Oh, hello again!

So it's not the death penalty cases per se that are costing so much, but the sheer volume of all cases? Because the way I imagine it, is that all those salaried DA's and staff would probably be working on some case somewhere if the death case/appeal was not going on. So then all these cost estimates are based on someone's version of opportunity cost? I really don't want to be contentious here, I just want to know how someone arrives at the conclusion that a death penalty case costs taxpayers X million more than if it were a life-sentence case. To me, it really looks like "soft" numbers, which are more than apt to be inflated from one side or another to prove someone's point. But I definitely want to hear more about it. Oh, hello again!

It got ignored in the thread I originally posted it to, but I'd really like to know... --------------------------------------------------------- Just a general question here since I've seen it repeatedly brought up... How do you figure our what it costs for the state to have a trial? I mean, the DA's are paid salary, right? They'd be getting paid no matter what the trial. The judge is on salary, he'd be getting paid too. The defense is either paid by the accused or provided by the state. Is this usually pro-bono or does the state pay million dollar lawyers to defend people? So all I can see that's left is expert witnesses that are compensated for their time and expertise. Does all that really add up to a few million? How about someone talk about the incremental cost of having an appeal. Or are people trying to base estimates on opportunity costs? Honestly, I don't know how it works... maybe a lawyer here could lay it out. Oh, hello again!

My World History class in Jr. High and High School both had sections discussing the major religions of the world, and that included some of the philosophies behind each. I didn't have a problem with that. I was often given funny looks for not paying attention. Was I having 5 religions shoved down my throat, or were my rights somehow violated? I never heard anyone complaining about it, students or parents. I'm actually glad I learned that stuff back then, it made college courses easier later. Oh, hello again!

But whether or not you're religious, that is the origin of the Christian holiday, Christmas, right? I wouldn't have any problems with someone answering similarly to me asking what Ramadan or Hanukkah is all about. Oh, hello again!

So by your rationale, then the US troops are "freedom fighters" fighting to help the average Iraqi experience a level of democracy and freedom that they have not previously known. I understand that you and the terrorists and the arab media thinks that these terrorists are "freedom fighters", but in your heart and in an objective reality, you'd see that people killing their own people, even those who may sympathize with them does not have a just cause. My comment about the stupidity of this whole concept was not describing the terrorists, it is describing the people who have been fooled into thinking that they are "freedom fighters". Since you misunderstood and went on to talk about tactics employed by the scum, would you be a proponent for having the US modify their tactics to directly combat these activities? Or would that just scream that we're not fighting a fair war and we shouldn't lower ourselves to their level, like so many posters here do? And as long as you are responding to me and quoting me, I'll keep thinking you are talking to me. Oh, hello again!

Before calling someone ignorant, you should find where they presumed anything like that. I know the insurgents get the fact that by dividing public opinion on our presence in Iraq that they're helping themselves out. It's working in Iraq and it's working here. I get that understanding them and their tactics will help in acheiving victory. But touting them as freedom fighters and ignoring the fact that people are too blind to see that they're killing mainly their own people is just stupid. The problem with this isn't that people don't understand the terrorists, it's that they don't understand how to convey that they're hurting Iraq and the mideast to their own people. I know that has to happen, and if I do... I'm sure some of our higher ups in the military do. But like you said, anything done by the US will be spun into propaganda for the terrorists. You know it will. What would YOU suggest we do to win hearts and minds over there? Let a few of our troops get blown up by seemingly innocent terrorists? Stop all fighting unless its in self defense? I can see how that'd get spun right away by the bastards. Question the overall strategy all you want, that's good... that's why SC has so much to talk about and occasionally progress gets made in more important places... but this all started out with people here thinking that these people are freedom fighters. Really, you think they are? Fighting for what freedom, to go back to living under someone like Saddam, Khomeni? Freedom to kill their own people? Freedom to not vote and be forced to adhere to the most extreme of islamic rituals? Freedom to wipe out the heathens that aren't in their sect of islam? Where were these "freedom fighters" when Saddam was killing his own people? The fact that the arab world doesn't ask itself these questions is amazing, but I understand that it is easier to blame the west instead. Was I talking about heroism? Or was I talking about how us understanding the entire Nazi mentality was not necessary for most of the world to decide that it was wrong and needed to be stopped? I forget because it's becoming habit for you to put words in my mouth. I agree. And what to do with the extremes for whom there is no compromise and will continue to try to sway the moderate? Just today it seems that more Iraqi leaders gave support to the elections and it is the small factions that are causing the problems. I'd say that the arab world is alienating the majority by giving overt support to the "GREAT SATAN" ideology. Granted, walking through with an iron fist would do the same, but when you have most of the mid-east news focusing on Abu-Graib and other "relatively" small incedents instead of the fact that many people WANT to have elections and WANT to take control over their own country's destiny, even if they don't like the US being there right now, it shows that we are not the only divisive factor. But you're right, maybe in the future we'll live in a county that tells people living under regimes like the Taliban, Kim Jong Il, or Saddam, "Hey, you get the government you deserve. Deal with it!" But that still won't make it right. Oh, hello again!