According to one reporter, Yvonne Ridley, Saddam was not captured by American Forces as has been recently reported by military sources and repeated by the media, but was taken by Kurdish forces and then delivered into American custody. This story has been quelled because of fear of potential clashes between Kurdish forces and pro-Saddam factions in Iraq if news got out. Democracy Now! has the full story on their Dec 23 show .
Other crazy/scary new items: Mad Cow Disease in America (one case means there might be many many more, stop eating the beef now!), and Judge orders Army to stop "experimenting" on US troops with trial Anthrax vaccinations (they've been requiring certain individuals to take the shots even though many have become very ill and a minimum of six have died from the innoculations).

Today passed hazily away
with rain misting sidewalks
my steps meandered
but ever the same direction.

Eventually a destination
was reached? where we played
the music and the echo
transversing twixt time.

Rude awakenings lead
to somber enchantments?
back to beginning
beginning to end.

I don't really want to say much more about prisons or about the army, as plenty has been said on both sides. What I want to do is describe a wider epidemic and demonstrate that blaming individuals does nothing to help the "greater good" and in many cases acts as a diversion and an excuse.
It is a matter of focus. Take any situation and first you must describe the problem and then who is facing it. In our recent examples we discuss the army recruits and the prison wardens (the killers as Paul puts it). Paul argues that whatever their circumstance, each person must individually make a choice that may in the future lead to killing and it is this choice that lays blame on them. I agree that each person must make the choice, and to some degree be held responsible, but feel that it is disingenuous to look at this choice in terms of its right/wrongness. If we take for granted that there is a certain moral humaneness that comes with being human (Paul does this when he says we all know it is wrong to kill) then we need to look at how this can become twisted to make individuals who kill, cheat, take advantage, and steal elections. This is where the focus should lie, why are these individuals taking a path that leads to possible killing? What is it in them that makes them prone to "evilness"?
Conveniently when we look at the statistics we find that some gigantic percentage of African Americans are making these choices compared to white people (African Americans in US ~12%, in armed forces ~20-30%). We can infer then, that black people are more prone to evil than white people. Of course we cannot infer this, and I don't even think Paul believes it. So if we assume that black people are not more inherently prone to killing, the next step becomes cataloging the differences between the two groups that might lead to their choices. We look at socioeconomics and find that black people are, on average, poorer than white people, they are more likely to not have adequate food and shelter, they are, again on average, less educated. These are the facts that are directly affecting the choices available to any particular group, and are what lie at the root of why many take up these "evil" jobs.
The worst part of focusing on the individual is that it actually acts as a buffer between the symptoms of the problem and its root causes. If we blame the individual for choosing poorly then we are in some way absolving the society of that same guilt. Society is responsible for the individuals that it creates to a very fine degree. I am not arguing that every crackpot out there is insane only because of their environment, but would point to the numbers of people in similarly affluent countries that don't share their plight. Why is the homicide rate in every other industrialized nation so far below ours? Why do we have 100s-1000s times as many people in prison? These are questions that may lead to appreciable changes in our culture and society, whereas qestioning the "evil" in any one individual leads only to segregation, separation, and excuses (if we add Paul's panacea of religion we get Crusades, Whoopie!)
PS: Terror Warning Level has been increased to Orange, and what does Google Image search show us for "orange terror":

Be afraid, be very afraid. Meow! Meow! Meeeeeeeaaaaaaaallllllllaaaaahhhhhh!

I got some cool spectackles. See um? They are with the blossoming lipstick plant, whose imminently budding tubes kindle startling urges from repressed desires. I love my lipstick, I sang about her on the radio for a little minute, she's worth it, is she not? I am just arrived from an epic. Pretty numb on the inside, my dopamine has been drained as if by narcotic overindulgence. I also cannot help but superenunciate ever ringing syllable that my fingers scribe into this infernal machine. Take thee and thine ring to everlasting damnation!!! Whoa. Gimli rules, and Legolas, c'mon... between him and them other two elf broads there were more "BEAUTY" shots than I've ever seen before.
"Anun nguy afolondadawoe..." whispers sweet Arwyn to her beloved Ranger, "anogorathanto elusily..." and the camera hovers over her beaming radiant blemishless divine face for a full minute. I am beautiful, beautiful, beauti...
Okay and last, inspired maybe by my newfound sight or more probably prancing elves racing through my thoughts, I give to you a turtle with lippies. Voila.

In response to Paul's journal about prison workers: Paul's initial comment was asking whether a person who worked at a prison where death row inmates are being held is just evil. I responded that they weren't inherently evil, but more likely worked there due to environtmental pressure and reinforced opinions about crime, penalties, and criminal justice. First off, most prisons are located in rurally isolated communities whose fiscal base has been systematically weakened through decades of sustained attacks, namely corporatization of small farms/business, declining industrial factory needs, etc, which leads to inevitable shortages in other areas, like education, affordable housing, etc. Therefore young workers often have little choice when faced with this job market; they can take up the failing family farm, work at Walmart, or work at the prison.
Now we all know what happens when young uneducated poor kids need something to do, that's right, sex and...babies (rural communities are not far behind inner cities in teen pregnancy rates). So you now have your 18 year old worker who needs a job and has a newborn to support. Next there's the fact that our uneducated kid has most likely grown up in a house with guns, a family that supports capital punishment, and maybe an uncle or two who already works at the prison. To him (or her, but most likely him) this is not a moral choice, this is just another job to make ends meet.
Well, Paul says that he can just move. Where is he going to go? He has no skills, no connections, no money saved up, he might have a kid and girlfriend to support, and all his family is right there. This is not an easy choice to make or carry through with.
So what's my point? I am not trying to advocate our current system, in fact, I think our system is one of the worst in the "civilized" world. I hate capital punishment and think it's barbaric and outdated, inhumane. What I think is that to blame the individual is not the right course of action. We need to blame the system that got him where he is now and focus on providing education, affordable housing, and job opportunities. If we fix these problems not only do we get an educated class of people who can start asking the moral questions of whether his job (and moreover his entire view of our criminal justice system) is right or wrong, but we also get someone who is less likely to commit the crimes to end up in jail in the first place. So, that's what I tried to explain to Paul. It ended up being very similar to an argument we have had about the individual guilt of armed forces members, which is also a good topic. There you have it, please feel free to comment on ya'lls journals too. Interjournal debates are neato.

PS: Gambling sucks.