You can add a 10-year-old Harris County boy to the list of deaths caused by the Iraq War. The boy apparently watched news coverage of the mishandled execution of Saddam Hussein and accidentally hanged himself afterwards. The Houston Chronicle reports:

A 10-year-old boy who apparently was mimicking the execution of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein accidentally hanged himself on New Year’s Eve, authorities said.

Webster police Lt. Tom Claunch said officers were called to an apartment in the 800 block of NASA Parkway about 7:30 p.m. on Sunday and found the boy dead.

Sergio Pelico’s mother told police he had watched a report on Saddam’s death on a Telemundo news broadcast before he hanged himself, Claunch said.

“It appears to be accidental,” he said of the boy’s death. “Our gut reaction is that he was experimenting.”

The same article says that another boy in Pakistan apparently also accidentally hanged himself after also trying to act out the execution of Saddam.

That makes it about 3,000 U.S. military deaths, tens of thousands of Iraqi deaths and two boys dead from playing hanging Saddam Hussein.

There are now more people on death row in Florida (398) than in Texas (392), mostly because Texas has executed 370 people since 1982 and Florida has only executed 64. Right now, of course there is a moratorium on executions in Florida, called by Gov Jeb Bush, because of a botched execution there in December.

Meanwhile, the NY Times says “a legislative commission recommended on Tuesday that New Jersey become the first state to abolish the death penalty since states began reinstating their capital punishment laws 35 years ago. Its report found “no compelling evidence” that capital punishment serves a legitimate purpose, and increasing evidence that it “is inconsistent with evolving standards of decency.”

Executions are on hold in ten states, including Florida, California and Illinois; but in Texas the system rolls on – despite reports that Texas may have executed three innocent people. In January 2007, there are five executions scheduled in Texas. Stay tuned for the release of the next public opinion poll in Texas. It will be interesting to see if the preference for life without parole over the death penalty has increased because of the reports of innocent people being executed.

You can add the execution of Saddam Hussein to the long list of Bush Administration failures in Iraq.

The hanging of Saddam Hussein this past weekend was a rush job that deteriorated into an atmosphere reminiscent of a lynching. The Americans could have prevented the execution from becoming a farce by refusing to hand over Hussein until better preparations had been made, but instead Bush’s “I wash my hands of this” approach ended up in a botched process that became another stage for sectarian vengeance that in turn will likely fuel more sectarian violence. The New York Times says the execution deteriorated “into a sectarian free-for-all that had the effect, on the video recordings, of making Mr. Hussein, a mass murderer, appear dignified and restrained, and his executioners, representing Shiites who were his principal victims, seem like bullying street thugs.”