Words cannot describe....

....how revolting this is. I had read about a Down Syndrome child being used as a human bomb, but I didn't write about it because I couldn't believe it was actually true.

It is.

I strongly believe that terrorists are cowards but the cowardice you're going to see in this story is just exceptional.
The suicide attack that was performed on an election center in one of Baghdad's districts (Baghdad Al-Jadeedah) last Sunday was performed using a kidnapped "Down Syndrome" patient.
Eye witnesses said (and I'm quoting one of my colleagues; a dentist who lives there) "the poor victim was so scared when ordered to walk to the searching point and began to walk back to the terrorists. In response the criminals pressed the button and blew up the poor victim almost half way between their position and the voting center's entrance".

I couldn't believe the news until I met another guy from that neighborhood who knows the family of the victim. The guy was reported missing 5 days prior to elections' day and the family were distributing posters that specified his descriptions and asking anyone who finds him to contact them.

When a relative of mine (who has a mental handicap due to an Rh conflict at birth) told me a month ago that a group of men in a car tried to kidnap him as he was standing in front of the institution he periodically visits to get medicine and support waiting for his brother; I thought that he was imagining the whole story.
He said that they tried to force him into the car telling him not to be afraid and that they're from the "mujahideen and not going to hurt him". My relative, despite his handicap was moved by his survival instinct and managed to run away.
After I heard the other story, I began to connect between the two stories and to consider my cousin's story as a true one that uncovered a new miserable war technique that can come only from the sickest minds.

Can you honestly say that people like this deserve to live? That it's wrong to kill them? That the death penalty is inappropriate for them?

The banal argument that we "lower ourselves to their level" when society kills people like this disgusts me. If we used Down Syndrome children as the unwilling executioners, then there might be some moral equivalency here. There is none.

Life in prison is an alternative for hypocrites. It devalues the lives of the convicts who have to live with these animals. The world will never be a better place so long as we tolerate evil and allow it to flourish among us. The craven opposition to the death penalty cheapens all of us when men like this remain alive.