So they finally found Saddam Hussein, and it turns out he looks just like Fidel Castro after he's made a six-hour speech. Something about being #1 on America's shit list seems to wither a man. I guess Saddam is simply sporting the "retired bogeyman" look.

Saddam today looks like a tired old man. Because he is. He's lost all his money, all his power, all his sons and just about everything else. By the time our soldiers finally found him, he pretty much had very little reason to hide out. Judging by the way he lived his life, he now has very few reasons left to live.

Now that ol' Saddam has been found (Was he the joker? The ace of spades? I just can't remember), he can officially step down as our bogeyman du jour. Now we must anoint another. My money is on Osama bin Laden. For starters, he's got experience in the job. And if he's dead, that's even better. Because then we'll never find him and we can just keep making him out to be a greater and greater demon. And those tapes that keep surfacing? Maybe they're real. Maybe they're not. The ambiguity just raises the fear factor. It's perfect for those who want to keep us in thrall to worry and dread. Not only can we shiver at the thought of an al Queda attack in our back yard, but we can also score some serious willies just pondering bin Laden's existence. Double the fears, quadruple the anxiety, right?

Has anyone ever noticed how pathetic our great objects of hate are when we finally find them? Take Eric Rudolph. The alleged Olympic, abortion clinic and gay nightclub bomber went dumpster diving for a few years before some rookie cop snagged him. He'd lost a lot of weight and looked nothing like his wanted poster. He more resembled your average homeless guy. Because, in fact, that's what he was.

The simple fact is that all these bogeymen (and those of the past, from George III to the Kaiser to Hitler to Stalin to Nixon to Clinton to George Lucas) are, in the end, just people. People not that different from you and me, except that they had power of some sort. It's a damned shame that they misused their power, to be sure, but still, we're talking about people.

I'm not excusing the bad things that they or anyone else has done. All of us do bad things. A lot of folks like Billy Graham, but a recent scan of Nixon's tapes finds the Rev saying some not very charitable things about Jews. Ghandi was a noble man, right? Sure he was. But he also has a habit of sleeping with young girls (ages 10-13, for the most part). He said he didn't touch them, that this was an exercise in temptation control. I'm happy to take him at his word, especially since he isn't here to defend himself further. Still, there is a creepy echo between his practice and a still-pending case involving an old man and children in bed.

There's good and bad in all of us. Period. No human being can stand as a pure paragon of virtue (ask Bill Bennett about that), and no human being should be held up as the ultimate evil. As most folks know, Hitler seriously considered the priesthood. He was also a painter. Turns out he was better at politics. And then he twisted that talent into some seriously evil deeds. But was he perfectly evil? Probably not. He just did a awful lot of bad things.

Same goes for ol' Saddam. I don't have any pity for the man--I don't think he needs it, to be perfectly frank. But I'm sure he did a few good things in his life. And, in the end, he is a person. Not a demon or the devil himself. He isn't worthy of a righteous hatred. And he certainly has never been the most dangerous man on the planet. For the last 60 years or so, the person holding that title has been the sitting president of the United States. In terms of potential devastation and suffering at one man's fingertips, no one can match our leader. We can kick anyone's ass ten times over with conventional forces, and if that doesn't work, we've still got a few thousand operational nukes which could easily kill every human being on the planet. We like to think that our president wouldn't go off half-cocked and drag our nation into unnecessary hostilities, but just about every president has had his own "little war," a small conflict where America gets to kick a little ass and feel good about itself. The freedom to wage war uncontested is about as dangerous a thing as I can imagine.

I know, I know, the proof is in the deeds, not the power. I think our current Prez is on the edge right now, what with his decidedly shaky doctrine of pre-emptive war and all. But the truth is, even he is just a man, and probably not the greatest or most terrible one at that. There's no need for folks like me to demonize him, and there's no need for him to demonize someone like Osama bin Laden or whoever else is called to become America's next bogeyman. I'd like to think that we're mature enough as a people to make decisions based on something more thoughtful than "death to the infidel."

But we're probably not. Americans have been burning witches for hundreds of years, and we're not likely to stop anytime soon.

Ding dong, the witch is dead. Long live the witch!

When Jon Worley speaks of witches, he is in no way demeaning Wiccans.