So what?

FOR seven minutes there was silence on the Indonesian island except the sounds of two men dying and a priest singing Amazing Grace. A Irish Catholic priest, officiating at an execution in Indonesia, says the men took seven minutes to die after having been shot. The execution squad of 12 had only three weapons armed with live rounds and the rest with blanks. I’m not sure why authorities insist on this ‘some rifles load with blanks’ line. I presume it is to help the poor guys doing the executing – ie maybe my rifle had a blank and thus I didn’t kill him’ but if a soldier doesn’t know the difference between firing a blank or a live round he shouldn’t be in the game. I’m not big into executions but if you are going to do it then let’s not stuff around. Have 9 out of a dozen rifles loaded with live rounds and the rest with blanks. In fact this makes so much sense I am beginning to doubt the Priest’s story. Nowhere in the article does it say the men were executed one at time and I can’t believe that the authorities expected three rounds to do the job on two people – that would mean one of those to be executed was only targeted by one rifleman. Thus, they would have been executed separately in which case each guy would have taken three rounds in the chest. That’s enough. Looks like a beat-up to me but either way I don’t care. Some of the hundreds killed by the soon to be executed Bali Bomber Barbarians would have taken a lot longer to die that 7 minutes.