Destroying lives to save lives

William Saletan found an interesting contradiction in Bush's claimed reasons to oppose stem cell research using human embryos. In threatening to veto the bill recently passed in the House, Bush is reported by CNN to have said

'I made [it] very clear to the Congress that the use of federal money, taxpayers' money, to promote science which destroys life in order to save life, I'm against that.' … 'Therefore if the bill does that, I will veto it.'

But according to Saletan,

Bush and his spokesmen routinely argue that [the death penalty] is justified not because murderers deserve it, but because it's moral to take one life in order to save others. He doesn't say that Person A should be executed because Person A is a danger to society. He says that Person A should be executed because the execution will deter Person B from killing Person C.

I know that Bush cares so little about intellectual honesty that a conflict like this won't slow him down a bit. But I wonder if there are any intellectually honest proponents of his position who would be willing to engage this issue.