Public Official Sentenced to Death for Taking Bribes

Barbaric as it may sound China is sentencing one of its political servants for taking bribes.

China has in the past executed high level officials for this kind of behavior in the year 2000. The whole story is in this article.

We can do a little thought experiment. An administrator at the highest level of a branch of government takes bribes. Due to his actions several people die. Is the administrator responsible for those deaths? Most probably. Should he be prosecuted? Yes. Should he get the death sentence? Maybe. It depends on the circumstances. I think that death - even manslaughter changes in character if it is in the commission of a crime. However, I think death might be reserved for violent activities that result in death.

The current case against this former administrator is less clear. So far, nothing he did directly attributed to the deaths in question (at least according to the article). It appears that he is being punished as an example.

Yet.... Here in the US bribery seems to be rampant. Large swaths of politicians were implicated in a recent misadventure. It would see that the threat of death would be handy to smack our politicians in line. Execute one for taking bribes that result in the death of a citizen they are supposed to be protecting and you might see a lot less of this kind of activity.

Imagine for a moment that President Bush and Vice President Cheney were brought under charges because they brought the US in to the war in Iraq under false information. It really doesn't matter if they believed the data or not. They are ultimately responsible for our being in a war in Iraq at this moment. Going to war should be like executing a criminal for crimes. You can't do it unless every t is crossed and every i is dotted and complete conviction of the problem is outlined.

Clearly, they did not do their due diligence before banging the war drums and taking us off to war. There are many others in our government guilty of this at the time of the start of the Iraq war.

If the threat and knowledge that if they screwed up they could be potentially be put to death by their own government existed in Bush and Cheney when they pushed us off to war - do you think they would have actively pushed so much for war?

I'm not in favor of capital punishment or war except in very specific circumstances; however, Bush and Cheney's responsibility for many deaths and hardships deserves this kind of scrutiny.

They won't get it as there isn't anything in US law indicating that this kind of behavior is even criminal. Still, it is a nice path for a alternate-history science fiction book.