Saddam on Playstation?
by Brian Dexter M. Medija
Published in his column Surfboard  on  SunStar Davao Weekend Edition
January 28, 2001.

    Earlier this week, my brother, Don, handed ownership of his original PlayStation to our 12-year-old cousin, Joshua, because he plans to buy a PlayStation 2 unit anytime. That’s no big deal, actually.  In fact, my brother’s act of charity sent Balong’s heart to cloud nine, although his mother has begun rationing his PlayStation hours so that playtime may not interfere with study time.

     Anyway. The deal is, a dictator down in the middle east loves PlayStation, too.  Actually, he loves the game machine a tad too much that he’s buying out entire stores in America.  A US government source told NBC in December 2000 that an informant warned U.S. Customs a month ago that an organized group with ties to Iraq was buying thousands of PlayStations from toy stores in Detroit.  Too bad, they couldn’t find PlayStation 2s, so they settled for the original PlayStations.

     Hmm… why not? Maybe the dictator needed gifts for his horde of children? Or, maybe even Saddam himself has gotten hooked up on the new PlayStation 2 hype that he thought perhaps he could try ‘em?  I mean, what do you know?  Even dictators need play.

     But thousands of them?

    Except if he’s in Santa Claus mode, or if he’s getting incredibly playful, the information saying that Iraq is buying up thousands of these high-tech game machines is raising a lot of eyebrows, mine included.  What’s he gonna do with all those PlayStations?

     The rumormonger claimed the video game consoles were shipped to Baghdad, not as holiday gifts but for the Iraqi military — to be used in their weapons systems.  That sounds much like a story out of the Power Puff Girls or Dexter’s Lab!

     However, if the information is true, the implications are not at all cartoony.

     The thing is, PlayStations are powerful machines.  Ordinary people may look at them as fantastic video game consoles, nothing more, but to some folk, this high-tech thingamajig could power up sophisticated graphics systems for say, the military.

     PlayStations are in fact super computers. Experts claim that the computer chip and 3-D video processor in a PlayStation are more powerful than the most sophisticated computer on the consumer market today.

    Even the teeny little Game Boy, now 11 years old, “has more process power in it than all the computers combined that sent the first man to the moon,” wrote one gaming columnist.

    According to the military experts, “PlayStations could provide the kind of sophisticated graphics for missile guidance systems, or remote control of pilotless drones for surveillance or bombing runs.”

     Now, it’s raising not only my eyebrows, but also the tiny hairs on my nape!  I’m getting a weird feeling Saddam’s really onto something.

     It’s rather impressive that the dictator and his gang could actually think up the bizarre notion of turning a game machine into a weapon of war.  It’s a pretty good deal! 

     But it’s unnerving to think that gadgets as “completely harmless” as today’s video game consoles could actually be turned into weapons of war and destruction. Security expert Gary Milhollin said, “as they get more powerful, the line between what’s a toy and what’s a weapon is going to disappear.”

     This year, Bill Gates’ “X box” video game console will be available in the American market.  It’s at least two times more powerful than Playstation 2s. ¤