A (Last?) Thought on Torture

A few more thoughts on our torture loving establishment.

They seem to insist on arguing minutia. Just how often was he water boarded? How long was each session? How frightened was he after each session? Has there been permanent psychological damage?

Or arguing political procedure rather than the value and right and wrong of the issue. I thought that is what politics is really supposed to be about: whether this position is right or wrong/good or bad. Apparently I was misinformed. Lincoln (with all of his compromises) would have been surprised. Obama, who claims Lincoln as a hero certainly doesn't seem to feel that way. It appears that he doesn't want a real investigation to get in the way of his reaching out to the rulers side for what I don't know. You can see something of the same attitude in the way he is trying to deal with the banks. Shoving money to the ones who screwed us up in the first place while not really changing anything.

None of those are real questions or real issues. Water boarding has been considered torture since at least the Inquisition and used as torture by them and the witch hunters of about 500 years or so ago. I doubt if it was invented then, I suspect that it has been around for much longer. There really isn't any real argument about what it is. Or at least there wasn't until a few of our governing class and our yammering class realized that is just what we've been doing for the last eight years at the direction of their buds and school chums. Suddenly then we have discussions about the mental condition and how carefully we have our (completely corrupt) house physicians keep an eye on these sessions. We are now into nuance.

The discussion has moved beyond Orwell into Lewis Carroll: "A word means just what I mean it to mean neither more nor less." It isn't torture because we say it isn't. Or maybe torture is necessary today (or yesterday) because we think that something really bad might happen if we don't torture. Actually, I think that Inquisition had the better argument there since they figured that your soul would burn in everlasting torment if they didn't torture you back to the one true god. We only want to find out if you are going to try to blow up our corporeal selves.