At least I wasn’t involved

As terrible as the whole sniper episode has been, I couldn’t help thinking that at least it wasn’t happening here in New York, and I didn’t have to be involved. After all we went through, and are still going through, on the World Trade Center, all we had to do on anthrax, preparing for bioterror waste issues (all that decontamination material has to go somewhere), not to mention chronic wasting disease, scrapie, West Nile Virus and the Asian Long-Horned Beetle, I’ve really had enough. The WTC disaster was unbelievably awful, but I was glad to be part of it, because at least it made me feel useful. There were things I could do there. If the sniper had been here, there would have been very little to offer.
I’m glad all the speculation is over. As it went on and on, and the demands of the sniper got weird, it really did start to look like maybe it was foreign terrorism, just screwing with us. And the notes, what we were told of them, seemed to indicate English as a Second Language. I guess we’ll know more about these particular nuts as we go forward. I am also thankful they took these monsters alive, because if they had been killed there would always have been doubts as to whether they had the right people, sparking conspiracy theories and everything else.
I don’t know if the affected states have the death penalty. In recent years I have slid over into the lane of death penalty opponents simply because there seem to be so many cases of mistaken identity and so much potential for error. But I still believe there are crimes which are so heinous that there is no purpose to keeping the criminal alive, and a purpose is served and an example made by putting the animal down, and I think we have such crimes here.