I can’t help but see a connection between these two stories.

First there's this one:

Ex-Klansman receives 60 years for three 1964 killings

A judge sentenced Edgar Ray Killen, the Klansman convicted of manslaughter in the 1964 slayings of three civil rights workers, to the maximum term possible, 60 years in the state penitentiary.

Circuit Court Judge Marcus Gordon ordered Killen, an 80-year-old Baptist preacher, to serve consecutive 20-year sentences for each victim slain by a Klan mob organized by Killen.

Then there's this one:

What makes an ex-dictator happy? Doritos

Saddam Hussein loves Doritos, admires President Reagan and considers both Presidents Bush "no good."

Those and other details of the deposed Iraqi leader's life in U.S. military custody appear in the July issue of GQ magazine, based on interviews with five Pennsylvania National Guardsmen who guarded Saddam for nearly 10 months.

Saddam was friendly toward his young guards and sometimes offered fatherly advice. When (a guard named) O'Shea told him he was not married, Saddam "started telling me what to do," said the soldier. "He was like, 'You gotta find a good woman. Not too smart, not too dumb. Not too old, not too young. One that can cook and clean.'"

The connection, I suppose is that both of these men seem old now… even innocuous to some degree. They seem harmless. Saddam Hussein comes off like a quirky oddball, and even seems almost grandfatherly. Edgar Killen is in a wheelchair and on oxygen. He’s ancient. He’s not going to hurt anyone, now.

It’s easy to feel sympathy for them now.

However, at one time, each of these men was young, full of life, and purely evil. Saddam Hussein has killed more people than we’ll ever know. Edgar Killen played an leading roll in the murder of civil rights workers because he didn’t agree with their beliefs and didn’t regard blacks as human.

Remember that. Look at the old men they are now, but don’t forget the monsters they once were.

The simple things have such a profound impact. I can't get my mind around the things that Saddam has done, the people he's killed. I can't imagine his crimes... but I can imagine a confused old man, sitting in a cell, chatting with his guards and enjoying Doritos. He's human to me, now. He genuinely is the monster I've always thought him to be... but he's a person to me now, too.

These are the feelings, as hard to articulate as they may be, that cause me to oppose the death penalty even though almost every other conservative I know is in favor of it. It's a "culture of life" thing, I guess. I don't think we're allowed to kill. Period. No genocide, no homocide, no abortions, and no death penalty either.

Don't forget what these guys have done, though. Don't ever stop seeing the whole picture. They must be punished for their crimes. They must be removed from society.

I’m not saying that the sympathy we feel for these old men is bad. Our compassion, our ability to see them as humans with lives as valuable to God as our own, is the main thing that separates us from them.