« win free stuff | Main | died dead dying »
master of his fate
by mg at 01:53 PM on June 11, 2001
Timothy McVeigh was killed today at 7:14 a.m. (CST) by lethal injection. McVeigh was guilty of the worst terrorist attack to ever occur on US soil, causing the deaths of 168 people when he bombed a government office building in Oklahoma City in 1995. He was the first person put to death for a federal offense in almost 40 years.
Creepy - the final, handwritten, statement of Timothy McVeigh, a poem called "Invictus," or "Undefeated." And here is the MetaFilter thread about it.
But he also says, "it's 168 to one."
The official statement from President Bush, a man who's had a hand in quite a few executions.
One of the witnesses to the execution speaks out.
Trail of a terrorist, lets you visit key places in McVeigh's life as he moved "from small-town boyhood to the execution chamber."
A beautiful and moving interactive photo essay.
China has executed more than a thousand criminals since April. Some were killed Roman-style, in front of +3,000 spectators.
Europe to the U.S. - McVeigh execution was "sad, pathetic and wrong."
comments (6)
i clicked "amused" & wish to clarify: you did not have an option "edified" so i settled for what was available.
by kd at June 11, 2001 5:21 PM
Well, I probably could have expressed this more clearly in the post, but I'm not really sure what my opinion is. On the one hand, McVeigh deserved to die, on the other, how do I justify being a vegetarian (for reasons of a philosophy of "do no harm") yet not caring when a human, even a despicable one, is murdered.
I guess maybe I wanted to just present as much information as I could find and allow people (myself included) to try to come to some sort of conclusion.
by mg at June 11, 2001 7:38 PM
I think you did well by presenting just the facts.
I've always been against the death penalty, though as charming as the U.S. prison system is these days, I sometimes wonder why.
I too had a hard time feeling bad for McVeigh.
Maybe had he lived, even in prison for the rest of his life, he could have learned something and in turn taught us something. Unlikely, I know.
I hope that at least his victims and their survivors get some peace from this.
by space at June 11, 2001 7:57 PM
i too have conflicted feelings on the subject, first of all because if killing is against the rules, it should be against *all* the rules, & i philosophically oppose the death penalty on those grounds & also object to mcveigh's martyrdom, still in this case i'm pretty sure had the gov't said to me, "karen, you inject the chemicals in his veins", i would have done so. wow that *is* conflicted isn't it?
by kd at June 11, 2001 9:12 PM
Add to the mix that a lot of Canadians have weighed in on this very confusing debate and you have nothing but what appears on the outset as a pack of bleeding hearts. But I don't think if we look beneath the surface that's the case. I really believe the reason we are so truly torn is enough people have died already, so what was the point of killing another. That act doesn't necessarily right the wrong Timmy started with his plan to build a bomb and his eventual use of it. Maybe I shouldn't talk at all since I have never had to think about where I stand on the death penalty. We don't have it up here, and we certainly don't support it. Thus why we won't send any of you yanks back if you manange to find a way to haul your criminal ass across our border. We are too just for that. In a lot of ways, that's a very good thing, but in others, we it sets us up as a "Welcome" mat. And besides, we miss out on truly grappling debates such as this one to find out just how big our bleeding hearts really are when push comes to shove. Well, here's to living vicariously through all of you under the ugliest of circumstances.
by Lilly at June 11, 2001 10:29 PM
I, personally, am against the death sentence (I won't go into that though), and I think that McVeigh is a despicable person who did a despicable thing, but look at it this way: He said himself that he wanted to die. By killing him, the authorities have essentially freed him from a life sentence.
by Tim at June 12, 2001 4:50 AM