I wasn't suggesting that the song was indirectly about Iraq. I was saying that the mentality which thinks that arguing about whether the war was lawful or not is irrelevant, since Saddam was a nasty piece of work anyway, is pretty close to the mentality which would see lynching as a righteous thing to do. If the same bloke wrote the Beer for Horse Song and that one about kicking arses, that is consistent with that.

Though I'm not clear who actually wrote the "Beer for horses" song - that link says "Toby Keith with Willie Nelson", but it's not clear if that means writing it together, singing it together, one write the other sings, or what.

In any case what the author means in a song isn't the end of the story. A stick points both ways, and so can a song.

Incidentally, for those of us who first got our ideas about America from the movies, most of the guys getting lynched in the old cowboy movies tended to be white. I don't know how far that reflects reality in the Wild West - after all these movies never seemed to have any black cowboys, and that was historically nonsensical - but that's the image. I'd have thought that someone assuming that any lynching had to mean black guys getting lynched would be more likely to be an American.