Some Things Never Change
I don't mean to dwell on the subject of torture, but it's kind of hard not to these days. The US senate is about to confirm Alberto Gonzales, whose legal advice led to the prisoner abuse (read: torture) scandal. There are all kinds of normally sane people trying to justify situations where it might be okay to torture a prisoner. How did the United Statesever allow such a demented logic to take hold?Today there is this report on MSNBC, which states that Human Rights Watch is releasing a report today which says that torture is still routine in Iraq, and that the government of Ayad Allawi is either actively taking part in torture or is "complicit". It seems that many Iraqi policemen, jailers, intelligence agents, and others are the same people that worked for Saddam. It should therefore be no surprise that they are stringing prisoners up by their wrists, giving out savage beatings, and using electric shocks on genitals.
As human beings, we should all be apalled that this continues to happen. Is this the sort of freedom and liberty America offers to the world? Even the FBI says that torture is not an effective way to gain information. There are better ways of extracting information than by torturing someone. You could torture an Iraqi to the point of him confessing to the Kennedy assassination, but it doesn't mean he did it.
Is it okay to torture 1,000 people if one of them gives up valuable information? What if that 1,000 people included your mother? What if the government spent hours applying electric shocks to your mother's genitals and she didn't have any information? The line has to be drawn somewhere, and as far as I'm concerned that line is drawn where torture begins.
So why does the Bush administration seem to have a fetish for torture? Because they rely on fear in everything they do, and they think that if they can continue to inspire fear, they can do anything they want to. Fear got Bush re-elected (you know, because the terrorists wanted Kerry to win, as Cheney said so many times), fear passed the Patriot Act, fear let people fall for the lies of the Bush administration on pre-war Iraq. The list goes on and on.
That's it for now. I'm disgusted. I'll return later with something non-political.
posted by Skrambled Egghead Reborn @ 9:38 AM
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