The past few days I've been seriously disturbed at the discussions I am seeing regarding torture. This country is now so polarized that there are people arguing that if Bush wants to torture prisoners he should be allowed to, and arguing which tortures are ok and which are not.
It hasn't been that long ago when we (meaning the United States) were regarded as and also regarded ourselves as the good guys. We did things the right way because it was the right way. I guess in today's terminology you could say we had a moral compass. That seems to be entirely gone now, at least at a governmental level. In the past we would never have discussed what torture was acceptable because the answer would have been a resounding "none."
The current administration not only defends torture as something good, but our Attorney General wants acceptable torture methods defined as anything that doesn't cause organ failure or death. Using this definition, beatings, rapes, removing fingernails, shoving objects under fingernails, removing fingers and toes, castration (as long as blood loss is minimized) and any number of other horrors of the medieval torture chamber would be perfectly acceptable methods for U.S. interrogators to use.
Maybe it's just me, but this more than anything I can imagine, defines what is wrong with the current President and his cronies. What kind of people can even think torture justified? What is worse, according to statistics, upward of 80% of those we pick up and detain are innocent. They are people who happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. That means that when we torture them for the critical information we think they have, they cannot stop the torture by giving in and telling us what we want to know. They don't know anything in the first place.
Finally, what about the long term psychological and physical effects of prolonged torture? Just because the person didn't suffer organ failure or die doesn't mean they didn't suffer and may continue to suffer for a lifetime. What sort of a nation are we turning into that this sort of atrocity could ever be considered OK and acceptable? How much deeper do we have to sink before the voters say "enough is enough" and attempt to bring back this country's honor?
1 comment:
Remind me to send you the e-mail I got from Henry Hyde (R-IL) regarding the torture bill. This traitor to the Constitution and violator of his oath of office actually had the Chutzpah to try and JUSTIFY his actions by waving the "oooh... boogie man terrorists are out to GET YOU!!" flag.
It is at times like this that I sincerely hope there is a Hell. Because I don't think there is anything here on Earth that is horrible enough, torturous enough, cruel and unusual enough for George Walker Bush, Dennis Hastert, Dick "Deadeye" Cheney, Howard Rumsfeld, Condoleeza Rice, Henry Hyde, Bill Frist or any of the other Bush Boot-lickers.
Post a Comment