This quote from Nicholas Guariglia at Pajamas Media puts some of the hand wringing about “torture” into perspective.
The faux outrage and response to the memos recall an old international law class, from some years ago, where the discussion turned to the immorality of coercive interrogation. The United States was torturing prisoners, the professor suggested, because the al-Qaeda detainees were subjected to female interrogators, barking dogs, and loud music. As fundamentalist Muslims, the detainees were not “comfortable” with women “speaking down” to them, the professor contended. Nor were they fans of the heavy metal music played in their cell. Additionally, as Middle Easterners, they were accustomed to a society where dogs are undomesticated, dangerous animals — think: the way Westerners perceive wolves — or so the professor’s argument went.
It was at that moment that I realized how similar these “torturous” acts were to my own everyday lifestyle. “Wait a second,” I interjected. “Being in the same room with a dog, listening to Metallica, and getting reprimanded by a female for something she thinks I did wrong? That’s not torture. That’s my Friday night!” [Hat tip Paul Hsieh]
8 comments:
This would make a bit more sense if the author's friday night had changed over time into being waterboarded repeatedly and slammed into a wall.
But hey, perhaps. To each his own.
To put this into a little more perspective, I would prefer to be slammed into a wall than have to jump from the 110th story of a building because my only other choice was to die in flames, even though I hadn't expressly chosen to declare that I wanted everyone who didn't share my beliefs to die horribly and taken action to put that into practice. But that's just me. Some people don't like walls.
Ho hum. The same jokey "articles" on torture circulated through the right-wing blogsphere when Abu Ghraib broke. They weren't funny then, either.
I saw Dick Cheney on Fox News calling for the CIA and Obama Administration to release the classified report on the information that they got from terrorists as a result of waterboarding. The information according to Fox News did lead to the arrest of another terror cell (of Asian nationals) in the west coast (California) ready to do another strike. Osama & Al Qaida top ranks had chosen Asian nationals for the team to strike at the West Coast, since they knew that after the strike in the East coast on 9/11, all law enforcement agencies will be looking for Arab looking people.
Cheney wants this report released so that the American people can see how useful waterboarding was. They applied all nice techniques to try and extract useful info from captured terrorists but none succeeded. It was only then that terrorists started talking when they put them thru waterboarding.
Colonel Oliver North also said on the Glen Beck's show that the US Defense had been using waterboarding for training of the special forces personnels in the last 40 years or so. Mr. North is wondering if this witch hunt by Obama administration of going after Bush officials who approved the waterboarding might extend to current & past military officers who used waterboarding for special forces training. Mr O'Reily said, that Obama ordered a strike in Pakistan northern territory in his first 2 few weeks in office and there were civilians that got killed in this air strike. O'Reily suggested that Obama has authorised a strike that contravenes international law and Geneva convention because civilians got killed in the strike therefore suggesting the Obama might be (or whoever advised him) are liable for criminal prosecution. O'Reily was serious, but he was trying to highlight the hypocrisy of the Obama Admin in trying to do a witch hunt by bringing up a possibility of going after officials from the Bush admin for violating/breaking the law by authorizing the torture of captured terrorists.
I think that the leftists in the US will bring down the abilities of the law enforcement agencies & security services to do their job probably, since they're not allowed to interrogate terrorists by playing Michael Jackson's Just Beat It song.
I say that President Obama is weak and it is playing to the hands of dictators & terrorists.
I meant to say:
...to do their job properly...rather than:
...to do their job probably...
No it's not funny anonymous, but neither is killing people, unless presumably they are in the first world and therefore presumably don't deserve to live. Sanctimonious prick.
Whatever, Anon. If you lot haven't gotten it by now you never will.
Yeah, Anon, you tell him Anon. Why don't you shut up, Anon, like Anon says? It's right thinking people like anon that get dragged down by anons like you.
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