I personally find this friggin' brilliant -

In the first week after the elections, the Iraqi Interior Ministry and the Mosul police chief are turning the tables on the insurgency here in the north by using a tactic - videotaped messages - that the insurgents have used time and again as they have terrorized the region with kidnappings and executions.

But this time the videos, which are being broadcast on a local station, carry an altogether different message, juxtaposing images of the masked killers with the cowed men they become once captured.

This modern form of the Pillory  should be particularly effective given that the goal of the "criminal" here isn't merely lucre.   Instead, he's using his crime to stand before the world stage and beat his chest like the BMOC he thinks he is.  These bastards might claim they embrace death but humiliation is another thing altogether - particularly when it affects the entire group's strong man fantasy ideology.  Becoming a Martyr might get a few deranged men out of bed in the morning to rally to the cause, but becoming a mockery is another thing altogether.

Of course, the usual suspects are already carping about it -

Sarah Leah Whitson of Human Rights Watch said such tactics raised the issue of whether the people were tortured or otherwise coerced into making the statements.

Last week the organization issued a report based on interviews in Iraq that "found the abuse, torture and mistreatment of detainees by Iraqi security forces to be routine and commonplace," said Ms. Whitson, the executive director of the group's Middle Eastern division. For example, she said, the police often described detainees as guilty before any trial had occurred and made them available to journalists to be photographed.

Don't get me wrong - I do agree that abuse of the abuser is a real risk here.   BUT, just as the West used the pillory & stocks until the mid 1800s to overcome our own period of lawlessness and barbarism, I'm willing to cut the Iraqi's a tad more slack than HRW is likely to.