John Young writes:

On Phil Hallam-Baker's rejoinder to Paul Bradley' defense of AP:

Virtually all of Phil's charges against AP apply equally well to state-sponsored killing in the natonal interest, including that arranged by highly educated, cultured, philosophical, nuclear physicists and electrical engineers.

That's the issue. Who gets to decide who lives and who dies, and how close the killer is to the slaughter, unprotected by law, by public consensus, by popular will, by apologetics for the security of national interest.

I think John has here hit the crucial point. *Any* form of killing in cold blood - whether state sponsored executions, AP-sponsored killings, or just plain hired hit-men, has the initiator of the killing taking onto him or herself the power of life and death over others. This is not a power which I feel can be used in an ethical manner, since it's exercise is totally irrevocable. Thus, I oppose the death penalty, even in the most egregious cases. Deciding who should live and who should die is simply not a proper power for a State, nor for any person. I have much less of a problem when a person is killed in an act of defense, in the heat of the moment. [Yup, I know that that leaves a big fuzzy area in the middle, but most cases are pretty clear]. Peter Trei trei@process.com