Okay, so let's see if I have this all straight now, because it's a confusing topic that's easy to get wrong...

First, the Bush administration (or "Bushists" as I'll be referring to them) use the tragedy of September 11th as a barely plausible justification for invading Iraq. Exploiting the temporary fears and anger of most Americans, the Bushists convince the populace that Saddam Hussein is an ally of Osama bin Laden (later disproved), and that he possesses weapons of mass destruction (also later disproved). A massive propaganda campaign is begun to "sell" the war, including the hiring of fake journalists, the bribing of "legitimate" journalists, and the convincing of the public that any criticism of the war amounts to traitorous behavior. Those who predict that a war in Iraq would become a long, bloody, complex mess are accused by the Bushists of being doomsaying intellectuals, who can safely be ignored for being "too smart for their own good."

The carefully orchestrated invasion goes off well, marking the last time things would go right for the Bushists there. Hussein, however, eludes capture even months after the occupation, as does bin Laden, blunting the soundbite-friendly "success" the Bushists had sincerely thought they'd be able to trumpet by then.

Finally, though, Hussein is captured, although like a dirty animal in an underground hole, again not exactly the most press-friendly situation the Bushists could ask for. In an attempt to cheaply and quickly sell American-style democracy to the rest of the world, the Bushists decide to bring Hussein before an international tribunal for war crimes, based on an American style of legal justice. The Bushists hope to use this propaganda-friendly trial footage as proof of the "civilized way" that Americans deal with such situations, versus the endless bloodshed and chaotic violence that marks the modern Middle East.

To their chagrin, almost every detail of the Bushist trial plan is called into question by one large international organization or another, from its location to its choice of jurors, Hussein's right to a fair appeal, etc. Meanwhile, the situation in Iraq becomes the exact long, bloody, complex mess the critics predicted in the first place -- few successes, lots of frustrations, hundreds being killed each week, under a style of religious suicidal battle that the Cold-War-trained US army simply doesn't know how to handle. In what the future will see as a major moment of shame in US history, the American government briefly embraces torture and other human-rights violations -- secretly at first, among jails and torture facilities in third-world countries, then overtly, by changing US law to suddenly make some of these activities legal.

This understandably alarms most of the rest of the world, especially considering that the US is the last remaining superpower on the planet, and almost impossible to defeat militarily if it came to such a thing. This results in the US over five years becoming the enemy of virtually the rest of the planet, as well as inspiring newfound respect and power for several non-US-led organizations that had recently been struggling -- the United Nations and the European Union, to cite two good examples.

Hussein's trial finally begins, becoming immediately hampered by his unruly behavior and his lawyers' denial of access to Western-style legal rights. The entire proceedings take on the flavor of a show trial, a flimsy display of "justice" by an occupying force in order to discredit those who were defeated, pretty much the opposite effect than what the Bushists were hoping for. The trial of Saddam Hussein becomes an international joke that the Bushists try to downplay more and more.

Meanwhile, after being promised a short and relatively bloodless war, America's moderate majority finally begins turning against the Bushists, horrified at the violence and cruelty coming from their own family members and neighbors. It dawns on millions of Americans that something horribly wrong is going on in Iraq; the phrase 'New Vietnam' starts getting whispered more and more, pretty much the most feared phrase in the entire country. A permanent backlash against the Bushists begins, leading to a complete turnaround in Congressional power at the mid-term elections.

Critics of the war use the opportunity to press for more handover of control in Iraq to civilian authorities, something the Bushists promised would happen soon after the invasion but had unsurprisingly become mired in politics. As more and more authority is given over to the Iraqi civilian government, it finally becomes clear to more and more Americans what the intellectuals had been trying to warn them about the whole time -- that the modern country of 'Iraq' is actually made up of several different ethnic groups that have been warring for centuries, bunched together arbitrarily into one country at the end of World War I by a bunch of white males in Europe. Hussein, for example, was a member of one such group called the Sunnis, and used his dictatorship to slaughter and torture another group called the Shiites. The US, meanwhile, have not only put mostly Shiites in charge of the civilian government, but have also stupidly handed over blanket control of such delicate operations as the jails and police force.

Unsurprisingly, many Shiites use the new power to enact bloody, cruel revenge on the Sunnis who had just been torturing and slaughtering them a few years previously. Fueled with American weapons, money and training, an all-out religious-based civil war erupts in Iraq, with the country dangerously close to falling into complete anarchy and regional warlord control. The Bushists try to suppress this information in their usual way; but with public sentiment now against them, the formerly cowardly mainstream media finally grows a backbone again, and begins calling the Iraq situation a civil war against the Bushists' wishes.

Then, in what can only be called one of the stupidest decisions in what might be the worst administration in American history, Bushists hand control of Hussein himself over to the Shiite-led civilian government, the very people who had been slaughtered and tortured by Hussein in the hundreds of thousands just a few years previous. The civilian president of Iraq immediately calls a halt to Hussein's trial, declares him guilty, and suddenly moves his execution date to the end of the week. American officials are barred not only from the decision-making process but even from witnessing the execution itself.

Execution commences, video of which is leaked to millions simultaneously on the internet. World watches horrified at thugs in '70s leather jackets and ski masks, the dirty basement killing chamber, the mob-like taunts and religious slurs, the decision to drop the floor while Hussein was in the middle of a prayer...all of it from people who are officially supported, funded and armed by the US government. Suddenly it becomes clear to millions around the world at once: that the US has spent billions of dollars and killed thousands of people, just to replace one group of genocidal extremist thugs with another. That absolutely nothing has changed in Iraq, except that the violent and vengeful ethnic group in charge now is okay with American companies being there.

Did I get all this right? Did I miss something?

So all of this I guess inspires a couple of big questions in me this week, none of which I have an adequate answer for yet...

1) Will the Hussein Tape in the future officially mark the 'tipping point' of the war in Iraq? For those who don't know, this is a term first coined by cultural critic Malcolm Gladwell, to explain the way that many things go from an underground movement to a mainstream one; not slowly and by general steps, as you would guess, but rather by the movement suddenly and explosively invading the mainstream culture, often through a small series of unexpected events. See, there's been something weird going on here in America over the last six months, for those who don't know, which is that there is a definite change in the air over how the general populace feels about both Iraq and the Bushists. I mean, seriously, I can see it even when I visit my family in suburban St. Louis anymore; how, for example, you never see yellow ribbons anymore on the backs of SUVs. (In fact, you're even seeing a lot less SUVs these days; but that's another story for another time.)

I'm wondering now, if this video of Hussein's execution is going to finally be the thing to tip the American populace's mood into an anti-war one, the thing that's finally going to make millions of Americans enlightened to how wrong and fucked up everything has become over there. Lectures about millennia-old culture clashes between obscure ethnic groups halfway around the world are good and all, but frankly are going to make most Americans' eyes glaze over about thirty seconds into them; but man, I'll tell you, it's difficult to misinterpret a video of a bunch of thugs in ski masks and '70s leather jackets, screaming religious slurs at a man with a noose around his neck while in a dirty concrete basement. As much as the Bushists have succeeded at making the US an anti-intellectual society these days, where it's considered both a sin and a crime against the state to "think too much," I just have a feeling that it's going to be impossible for most Americans to ignore the implications of the Hussein Tape. I'm wondering if this is maybe the beginning of the end; the 'eucatastrophe,' as JRR Tolkien put it, a sudden and random event that against all odds starts making things right again.

And then 2), I wonder if the circumstances behind the Hussein Tape prove something else as well; that we are now in the middle of the citizen-content age, and that nothing an oppressive government can do anymore to stop it will ever succeed. I mean, let's face it -- one of the most important stories about the world in the last few years was just broken this week via a cellphone and a YouTube account, in the middle of one of the most heavily secured areas of the entire planet. If such a damning video can get out so easily from one of the most security-sensitive places in the world, what fucking hope does a group like the Chinese government have against an entire country? Up to now, I think, a lot of people have been accepting it as inevitable, that a government or group could completely block communications access for a large group of people; but really, that's just not true, not if an opposing group dedicated the same amount of resources to combating the blockage. Take China, for example, and the way their government is controlling all internet access there from the base root level; but what if another major world power actually got into a conventional war with China (or even an "info cold war," if you wanted to call it that), and decided to put a bunch of satellites in place that would simply beam in uncensored wireless internet to billions of Chinese citizens' mobile devices?

The only thing that's kept governments and private groups in such pervasive control over this stuff is merely that no one's put up a big-enough fight about it yet; few groups are pissed enough yet, for example, to fund the billions needed to launch a series of 'anti-censorship' satellites. But Jeez, you know, what does it say about the potential power of such situations, when some random government official can just whip out a cellphone in the midst of one of the most secretive events in modern history, and 24 hours later singlehandedly change the course of world events? I'll tell you what it says; that even as we move into an age where most citizens are monitored 24 hours a day, this also means that our leaders are monitored 24 hours a day too, and that those leaders can't exploit the situation for benefit and not be burned by it at the same time. The Hussein Tape proves that no situation anymore can be completely leak-free or private, no matter how much the people in power think that it can, no matter how much money or how many resources are used to ensure that it is. Yeah, suddenly Time magazine's Person Of The Year isn't looking so stupid anymore, is it?

Okay, that's the view from the soapbox today. And I didn't even get to the random notes I had for you as well, so I guess that'll come in another couple of days. See you later, and keep those cameras rolling!