Let's stick with the numbers, rather than the description of method [tortured/mutilated]: <Of the 6 billion people on this Earth, not one killed more people than Saddam Hussein. And not just killed but tortured and mutilated>
As an American military boss said, "There's no nice way to kill somebody", so let's leave off the mutilated and tortured part. If I was killed by being shot with a rifle, I would consider it mutilation and torture. Different from having a drill through my brain, but probably more painful. Brains don't have pain receptors [though they get headaches] so doctors can prod brains which are awake and the person doesn't feel pain.
So, who is in the running for "Living person who has killed the most other people"? And we should include Saddam though he is dead, as his is the benchmark.
I have probably killed a few through incompetence or carelessness or even negligence in specifying or arguing for fuel specifications which would reduce vehicle fires in crashes. Maybe I have induced some to support welfare systems which have caused deaths through funding evil-doers to live on welfare using their unloved, cruelly-treated and now dead children as meal-tickets.
But direct actual deaths - I'm not going to win. Saddam has allegedly done some. How many? Not very many I guess. Nearly all have been by law enforcers or as a result of wars. He couldn't really claim all the Iranians and Iraqis killed in the war between Iran and Iraq as he had USA support and without USA support he might not have bothered, which suggests an American might be able to claim some of those if not all.
Henry Kissinger is still alive and he must be a contender because of his enthusiasm for Indonesia taking over East Timor, without including any Vietnamese in the equations.
How about Hu Jintao who perhaps has a few notches to his belt from his days in Tibet? What about Rwanda? Somebody should be able to claim a lot there. Remember Bosnia-Herzegovina which was a big deal in the 1990s. Then April Glaspie and James Baker were Gung Ho for Saddam invading Kuwait. James could claim a hand in that, though Saddam would dispute the claim [if he was alive].
How about whoever invented AIDS retrovirals which have kept swarms of HIV people alive to go on and infect and kill hordes of others? They could claim a LOT of people and maybe more than anyone as AIDS deaths are in the millions.
If we stick to a definition of violent death which was definitely not self-inflicted or inadvertent, there really are not that many contenders these days. The world is a very benign place.
Saddam was a rank amateur compared with swarms of others. Heck, one bloke dropping a bomb over Hiroshima beat Saddam and Saddam had to work at it for years, not just fly an aeroplane over a city and be back in time for tea.
I don't think Saddam can claim those through the shredding machine because the blokes who actually did the work could claim that. Same as King George II can't claim those in Hadditha and Kissinger can't claim those in My Lai.
Mqurice |
