Friday night I was watching 20/20 and they were doing two hours on You Tube.com and the impact camera phones, security cameras and the Internet are making on our lives. One clip was from a convenience store security camera where a thief bashed a short, skinny little female store clerk about the head and shoulders with a hammer mercilessly, even after she was on the ground. The sight made me think of the money that could be raised for our prison system by getting willing citizens involved in the death penalty process. What if, for $500, you could participate in an armed hunt for this guy through the woods and buy a chance you might be the one who got to splatter his brains on a tree? I think I might chip in.
Then they broke into this report, which was suspiciously thin of any real content, and announced Saddam Hussein had been hanged. While I had been fantasizing cornering that convenience store robber and splitting his cranium with a hollowpoint seconds earlier, I had my reservations about what our country* had just done with Saddam.
"Reservations?! You commie sissy! Rape rooms! Wood chipper! Gas! Bodies in ditches!," you say. Okay...what is your evidence these things existed?
The assumption you may be under, and I was under the same one for a long time, was that wars work this way: someone attacks United States, United States responds, enemy is defeated and realizes they were wrong in the first place, everyone shakes hands and sets up trade agreement for cheap electronics.
But actually the citizenry are often manipulated into war. Back in 10th grade I watched a television mini-series called The Human Animal**. In this special, old U.S. propaganda films were shown where it was alleged Japanese soldiers were tossing Chinese babies onto their bayonets, complete with footage of Asian actors doing this with rag dolls. Of course it was horseshit, but if it was 1942 and you heard that wouldn't it make your blood boil? All reason would go out the window.
It still goes on today. Here's an article about how the country of Kuwait hired a U.S. public relations firm to interest the American public in helping out their country against Iraq. During this PR (propaganda?) campaign it was said Iraqi soldiers were tossing Kuwaiti babies out of their cribs and then stealing the cribs. Of course now the Iraqi soldiers are our allies and we would never accuse them of such a thing. Either way, it all turns out to have been horseshit:
...the American PR firm Hill & Knowlton was hired for $10.7 million to devise a campaign to win American support for the war...Similar unsubstantiated stories appeared at the UN a few weeks later, where a team of "witnesses," coached by Hill&Knowlton, gave "testimony" (although no oath was ever taken) about atrocities in Iraq. It was later learned that the seven witnesses used false names and even identities in one case. In an unprecedented move, the US was allowed to present a video created by Hill & Knowlton to the entire security council.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0906/p25s02-cogn.html
Here's Nazi Hermann Goering on the subject at the Nuremberg Trials: "Why of course the people don't want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece?...But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along...That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country."
So no, I don't accept the woodchipper stories as fact. I don't deny them, either. I don't know! And I wouldn't put a noose on someone's neck without being certain. I could clearly see what that convenience store robber had done; not so with Saddam.
I did a little reading on the gassed Kurds we keep hearing about (are these the same people Little Miss Muffet ate with her whey?). The Kurds were not the target of Saddam's gas. Iranians had invaded a Northern Iraqi city and these Kurds were caught in the crossfire. (Pat Tillman got killed by friendly fire. Should we have a trial for Bush?) And who supplied the gas? Let's go ask some salesmen with any of the well-known U.S. chemical companies...hey, where ya goin' fellas? And I've read my fellow Americans saying the best thing we could do is douse the area with Zyklon B. "We'll teach `em to gas thousands of people! Gas thousands of people!"
Then you have the fact that Saddam Hussein was given the key to the city of Detroit in 1980 after he made a huge donation to a Christian church!
"But...but...butt...but...he was a brutal dictator!" Well...look what he was up against. Would it have been better if he was a nice guy and wound up like Mark Berg or any number of other visiting Americans? I think he had a compulsive attachment to his head. And if the entire nation was against him, why are we concerned that 50% who remain loyal will riot? Geez, Dick Cheney, will those flowers ever get thrown at our feet?
So yes, pardon me if I have some reservations about the hanging of Saddam Hussein, and the toppling of the one secular government in the Middle East.
* Those were puppets that hung him; don't fool yourself.
** It was hosted by Phil Donahue. So?
Saddam Invites Rumsfeld to the Rape Room 
I like the idea of letting citizens participate in a public hunt of capital prisoners. You would have to hold a lottery, I fear it would be massively popular. Have you pitched this to Rupert Murdoch yet?