Riffs From The Row

By William Van Poyck - January 18, 2007

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sitting here reflecting on the recent semi-televised snuff video-like execution of Saddam Hussein it occurs to me that the world witnessed the natural culmination of this nation’s obsession with administering the death penalty. Stripped of all the political hyperbole attached to the “war in Iraq”, denuded of the rhetoric about “Strategic imperatives”, even putting aside the petroleum implications, this state-sanctioned murder was the direct result of this nation’s determination (and more particularly, President Bush’s personal fervor) to kill one man, Saddam Hussein. The lust for blood was so great that Bush took the entire country to war in order to effectuate it, using blatantly false factual allegations to bully an apathetic and curiously unquestioning public to sign on to the plan. It is certainly no coincidence that George W. Bush, the man who, as governor of Texas, oversaw the executions of over 150 of his own citizens, was the one who through sheer force of will (abetted by an incredibly gullible citizenry) initiated an entire war in order to kill the man who allegedly tried to assassinate his father, George H.W. Bush, sr. Perhaps there is more than a little karmic justice in the fact that America, so eager to kill, no matter the cost, now finds itself hated and vilified by much of the world while bogged down in a 21st century version of Vietnam. In the interim, untold thousands of men, women and children have been shot, blown up and massacred, and Iraq has essentially ceased to exist as a functionally united nation. This is the price America has been willing to pay in order to maintain its grip on the illusion that premeditated killing people is a viable domestic and foreign policy for the self-proclaimed land of the free and home of the brave. Oh, how far the mighty have fallen!

Back in America Jeb Bush, governor of Florida and brother of the President, ordered a temporary moratorium on executions following the botched execution of Angel Diaz on December 13, 2006. After taking 34 minutes to die in front of two dozen startled witnesses who watched the conscious prisoner arch his back, gasp, roll his eyes, froth at the mouth and turn towards the  witnesses and attempt to mouth words for at least 24 long minutes, Bush ordered that a commission be impaneled to determine what went wrong and how to fix it. The autopsy has already revealed that the executioner’s needles severed the veins in both elbows so that the poison cocktail simply saturated the muscle tissue rather than entering the veins. That made for an exceptionally slow and painful death leaving twelve-inch long chemical burns in both arms. The commission is scheduled to issue its report by March 1st, 2007, at which time executions will presumable resume. This might be an opportune time for thinking people to step back for a moment and reflect upon just what it is they are trying to do here: figuring out the best way to kill people! Is this really an appropriate expenditure of intellectual resources for a nation which claims to be the free world’s beacon of light to which all other countries should aspire and seek to emulate? Just wondering…

 

William Van Poyck was sentenced to death in Florida but was transferred to Virginia’s death row by the governor of Florida after Florida State Prison guards murdered Van Poyck’s codefendant, Frank Vales, in his death row cell in 1999.

 

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