Well said, Akenaton.

Teribus: sometimes, at least, your pontifications are sheer piffle. You know perfectly well that Saddam's was not a public execution. But as with executions in Britain, when they were still undertaken, witnesses were present. What is the difference?

Incidentally, executions in the US are not public either, though they are sometimes attended by ghouls in sufficient numbers to warrant theatre-style seating. Yet even when it comes to these semi-public showings in America, I know of specific cases where executioners were not masked (the killing - one might as well say murder - of Bruno Hauptmann for instance) where the executioner did not hide behind a mask. I had rather assumed from that, and from the depiction of execution scenes in movies, that this is the norm in the US.

But I must be wrong, because Teribus said: "...it has always been the case that the executioner's face is masked."