Saddam Hussein Deserves to Live!

Eventually, within the next month, and before January 27th, 2007, Saddam Hussein will be hung and yes, you heard me correctly, the man should not be put to death. Besides the obvious gripes one has had over the course of his ridiculous trial (three defense lawyers killed, another seriously injured, anonymous witnesses, etc) there are obviously reasons why he should live.

First and foremost, this trial's death sentence outcome is over a 1982 incident where he had 150 people tortured, deported and/or killed. I know! 1982! What about all of those other brutal instances where he killed far more people? Why doesnt he get to answer for those crimes? In 1988 he poisoned over 100,000 Kurds, something he and others are currently on trial for, but something he wont be able to answer for if he is killed within the next 30 days or less....

When are we going to hear his side of the story about the occupation of Kuwait, the first Gulf War, the UN inspections, the "weapons of mass destruction", and the second Gulf War? We have so much to hear from this man that his death is an injustice to mankind. We deserve to know what he was thinking during all of these times. What good is knowing our side of the story when we dont have his side? Im not justifying any of the things he has done. I think he is a horrible person who should be punished each and every day that he continues to live. But it has always been said that humanity has to learn from it's mistakes. Mankind cant improve upon itself unless it studies things that have gone wrong and incidents in history. Saddam needs to be our insane leader lab rat. Once we start to delve into his mind imagine how much "saner" someone like Kim Jong-Il becomes.

The sad fact may be that killing Saddam is the quickest way for us Americans to begin our healing from this horrible miscalculation - the second Gulf War. What I mean is that Saddam is the largest piece of evidence that exists, both for and against this war. He can either validate the war by stating that he did stockpile weapons of mass destruction, or he can completely destroy it by categorically denying his ownership of such weapons. Either way, can we believe him? Or is it just easier to kill him, thus burying all hopes of establishing some sort of truth. Im sure it is much easier for our government to swallow the former and hang this bastard. Politically it makes sense, but doesnt it also fly directly in the face of what our government stands for?

I understand that the trial wasnt held in the good ol' US of A, but to think that we arent the puppeteers behind this trial is just plane ignorant, so please if this is your argument, please stop reading. In fact, you shouldnt be here in the first place, but I digress.

And no, just because I share the same birthday (April 28th) with Saddam doesnt mean I have a soft spot in my heart for him.

And has anyone else thought that if Saddam was on ecstasy he would be a much nicer person? Or where those just my thoughts?

While all my previous thoughts are well and good, the reason I hold in the highest regard about why Saddam shouldnt die is that dying is too good for the man. He deserves to live. To live and to suffer.

One of the few biblical sayings that I can get behind with one hundred percent certainty is the idea of an eye for an eye. If you kill one person, you deserve to die, that is if you are proven, without a shadow of a doubt that you are guilty. You even deserve to die if you kill multiple people as long as you are tried for each case, either separately or together, before you are put down.

But when you kill hundreds of thousands of people I can not agree that death is the best answer for you. I imagine that there are many people who have survived his ire, or who had family members hurt or killed by his hand, that want to see Saddam live out his days rotting in a jail cell, far from the opulence he enjoyed while being the enigmatic despot of Iraq for all of those years.

While I want the man to suffer for his atrocities, I am not inferring that he should be tortured. Knowing that his sons, his progeny, his name, were killed by the "infidel" Americans is torture. Living in a confined space for years upon years is torture. Having no outside contact is torture. There are many ways to make this man suffer; killing him should be the last thing we do.

Yet here we are, about to kill him.

Here is my suggestion. First, we try him for every single matter of injustice to human nature that he committed. That is, ever single matter that we can actually prove. Unfortunately, with the amount of bad that he has accomplished some is bound to slip between the cracks. It is a sad fact of quantity that we are faced with in cases such as this.

Second, we sit him at a table with a ball point pen and paper and tell him to write his autobiography, from beginning to end. I cant be the only one interested in the mind of a mad man. I want to learn much from him. I want to know his process of thinking and his rational behind events. We werent given the opportunity to read the crazy mind of Hitler - he went and offed himself before we had the chance - but we are now given the chance to read the mind of a similarly disturbed human being. The chance to learn about these maniacal geniuses (genius is correct) come too few and far between.

Finally, once we are complete running the gamut of tests on him we build him an eight foot by eight foot bullet proof glass enclosure (complete with working see-through toilet) and stick it in the middle of the most popular square in Iraq. This way he suffers. He has to do all of his living (and shitting) in the public eye. If any of the survivors want to confront him they can. And most importantly, other world crazies will see that when you commit crimes of his nature, crimes against humanity on the whole, you wont get the ease of escaping justice at the end neuce tide rope.

We, as Americans, and generally as the world as a whole, have this predisposed notion - possibly derived from too much hollywood imposed on our daily lives - that the bad guy dies in the end. What if some bad guys were meant to live? Not to do more bad, but to serve as a reminder; to serve as a tool of learning; to serve as a relief valve for our inner demons; to serve as an answer to our questions or problems; or to serve as a symbol of where we were and how we need to change for the future.

I say let Saddam live! Who is behind me?

Warm, Fuzzy Dreams - or - Lab Rat part 1

Everything seemed pleasant. I felt warm and good, nothing like I should as a result of what had happened. I was comfortable and dreaming. Dreaming this dream that I cant even remember, but I know it was good and I have been striving to recapture what I was thinking. I felt this sense of wholeness. I was happy and contently sleeping, or so I thought.

I remember being woken up, "Josh," and I remember slowly opening my eyes and the haze creeping out of me as I sat up. Where am I?

"Why are you waking me up," I asked?

I was comfortable after all. Rather, I was comfortable.

I shook a little bit as I sat up more, drank some water, wiped the chilly sweat off of my brow and put myself to bed.

I then woke up just as if no time had elapsed since I went to bed. I was reset. I called the office and told my boss I wasnt going to be able to come to work. He suggested that I go to the hospital. I thought nothing of it and went back to bed for a little while.

An hour later I woke up again and called my father. I had second thoughts about not going to the hospital, so I at least wanted to talk to my doctor. The next thing I know my father is driving to come get me and Im getting dressed.

It turns out my doctor is in Miami, shooting some photos for his self help/back book. I dont have back problems, so I dont ask.

Instead I am taken to the doctor across the hallway from my doctor. I later find out that in addition to being a regular doctor she is also a dermatologist. That fact really plays no part in this story, but it does explain all the plastic faces sitting in the waiting room.

Amongst these faces I certainly stood out. I was scruffy, to say the least - Ive been growing my facial hair, ya know, just to see what I can grow (not much, by the way. I have nothing on 14 year old Mexican boys). My hair was strewn in each and ever direction, more so than usual, due to my presumably restless yet unmemorable sleep from the night before. I had on my yellow puma sweats with the green stripe down the side, a wife-beater and a brown and orange zippered sweater. I always wear vans, these were brown - they matched my sweater. At the very least something always has to match something else. I did moisturize, as I am accustomed to do, so my skin was soft.

As I filled out the mass of paperwork required to visit a doctor I watched as plastic face after plastic face embarked on their voyage to the back rooms to see my new plastic doctor. After signing away the rights to my skin cells upon my death I too joined the throngs of plastics in the back.

The room was little. The white walls were sparse, but contained the necessary tools one always envisions in a doctor's office - the tool that looks into your soul (ears and eyes), and the bio-waste container. There were aqua-green cabinets on the wall which I assumed contained millions of different samples for plastics to try. I dont need samples. Im not plastic.

Three nurses came in, all at different levels in the nurse-dom. The youngest stepped up to take my blood pressure, which was a bit below normal. The eldest attempted to take some blood. Apparently my veins dont like getting poked, which meant that I had to get re-poked countless times before a success was met. Oddly enough I dont mind needles. The middle nurse was content with watching what the other two extremes were up against. We had a joke, we had a laugh.

All three hooked me up to an EKG machine. They huddled around me, gluing on sticky electrodes that will help measure my heart rate. The machine is switched on for 10 seconds, turned off and the stickies are pulled off of me just as quickly as they were put on.

And like a gust of wind, my new plastic doctor rushed in. "Hi pumpkin!" She was short and thin. Dark from tanning. Plastic and leathery, but not yet to an extreme. Her long black hair was pulled back behind her ears. Her blue eyes might not have been blue. She had on a tight sweater with black, teal and tan horizontal stripes. Her corduroy pants were also teal colored and she had black ankle high boots.

Her age? Hard to decipher, but if her personality and energy were an indication she would be in her teens.

She asked why I was there and after I told her I passed out she told me to recount the story.

"Earlier in the night I got up from my couch and went over to the fridge for some yogurt. I knelt over, reached into the back, grabbed my raspberry and white chocolate Dannon fat free yogurt and stood up quickly. I got dizzy, but stabilized myself by grabbing the counter and the wall. After a few seconds I was fine and I sat back down for a while.

"A few hours later I had to go to the bathroom so I ran up the stairs. As I got to the top I felt dizzy again. I looked at myself in the mirror and I noticed that I was sweating, but at the same time I felt cold. I pee'd and continued to feel dizzy. I grabbed onto the bathroom counter to try to stabilize myself, but only felt myself getting dizzier. I sat down on the toilet, leaned my arm up against the counter and put my head on my hand.

"That's all I remember. Although I was dreaming...."

My new plastic doctor checked my vitals, and put her cold stethoscope on my chest and back. She then sat down next to me and told me that she was sending me to the emergency room.

I was shocked and left without words. She told me that she didnt know what was wrong with me and because of that I needed to be seen by the hospital. "They can get blood results done within hours and have the equipment to rule out heart attacks and strokes. I want them to keep you for at least 48 hours.

I sat in the waiting room as she translated her chicken scratch into something legible for the hospital to discern. 48 hours seemed extreme, but Im not a doctor. I really just wanted to remember what I was dreaming about....