The foundational horror of torture requires the person knowing they are in a place that is outside the laws of any nation as well as any basic laws of humanity.

If you do not think so, imagine being kidnapped and put in a solitary cell with no light, no ability to speak with anyone, not even your captors, no idea why you were kidnapped or who your captors represent, given some moldy bread and water once a day, and no idea if you will ever be let go or be killed at any moment. At no point is physical violence used against you. Put yourself in that place and then imagine how you would feel. Imagine what you would call that treatment.

Torture is like porn. You know it when you see it or read about it. Don't need despicable asses like Rudy to try to rationalize or "define" torture.

Just when I think Rudy could not be a bigger political asshole than he is, he does something like this to prove me wrong.

Remember the America where we didn't debate torture?

When was that -- 1999? 2000?

Good times.

--Anonymous

We have debated torture since the war in Vietnam (Phoenix program, one way rides in choppers at high altitude, and worse). Of course you were a traitor or a communist if you mentioned it. Then we had the School of the Americas, (now WHINSEC).

http://www.soaw.org/

But only dirty fucking hippies believed all that. The government maintained "plausible deniability" - up until recently.

The Khmer Rouge raised the practice of torture to an exquisite and horrifying method of subjugating even the mildest forms for dissent. Waterboarding was a regular treat for any dissident who didn't end up in the Killing Fields. What the Khmer Rough knew, and what other state sponsors of torture know, is that torture is NOT an effective means of extracting actionable intelligence. However, it is a highly effective method of terrorizing people who might be sympathetic to the cause of the person, or persons, being tortured. In other words, torture is really only effective as a means of Terrorism. Yes, that is correct. Terrorism.

This is the first time I've taken a look at the comments section. What the Hell is Bebop-o talking about. Can anyone decipher this gibberish?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/04/AR2006100402005.html

What Did He Say?

This is the first time I've taken a look at the comments section. What the Hell is Bebop-o talking about. Can anyone decipher this gibberish?

-- zorro

Only very special people who read all the comments for a minimum of one year. then say the magic word, will get the decoder ring.

Be-bop-o is our resident poet. If you like playful language and the interweaving of conceptual threads, he's like a cool glass of water, all rimey with droplets.

On the other hand, if you're not interested in expending any energy on the words you read, just skip him. I'm sure he won't mind.

not Tonto,

nor disco.

It fiasco!

What is there to compare? The abuses committed in our prison system are generally illegal and few argue about the rightness or wrongness of guards beating prisoners and torturing them. That such abuses occur is terrible and indeed the general state of our justice system much less our prison system are real issues- but few people support such abuse in public and call for it to be codified in law.

What makes the torture of Detainees in the WOT such an issue is that people ARE making arguments in favor of torturing people and people ARE seeking to make it legal. They are seeking to make disappearences and torture and even death due to torture acceptable and even normal.

Few people stand around and write twisted legal justifications for why prison guards should be able to set up cage matches to the death between prisoners for their amusement. But we do have federal lawyers for the Bush Administration writing legal treatisies that define torture as only causing "organ failure."

And besides all that- I won't mention that comparing two disimiliar events for the purposes of negating one of them is a standard logical fallacy that would earn you no points in a debate setting. Its sort of like saying that one can't care about animals and still eat meat. Gee- if you don't spend the same amount of time talking about prison abuses in the US that you do about state sanctioned and approved torture by the highest levels of the US government- then you are a hypocrite? False logic.

Yikes. Terrorism indeed. Not as unprecedented a thought as some would have it, though. During the 80's many of us were humiliated and distressed at our government's involvement in the foul mess in Central America. What we got our hands into in El Salvador, for instance, could hardly be called anything but terrorism. Such tactics have always been on the table for Washington, whether the citizens have known it or not.

Bebop-o keeps us all grounded. If you read the comment threads often enough and long enough, you'll see what I mean.

Or, as was already suggested, you can just skip his earthly wisdom, and move right along.

You are the area Oh, so geopolitical,

A Sahara, A Oases, and a pleasant

mirage,

And a October fest, a Pumpkin bier.

This is not to say that torture in American prisons has no consequence. It is to say that torture sanctioned by the highest levels of our government as a wartime tactic is an abomination that makes even the prison system pale in comparison.

Torture is torture is torture..

And yes, I know that some American citizens have been tortured in "the war on terror".

Let's face it though, the average American has a *far* higher chance of being incarcerated and tortured due to the drug war than due to the terror war.

A family member of mine has a close friend who just got out of prison after fifteen years for, you guessed it, a drug charge. The tales this man has to tell would shock you greatly.

The point I'm trying to make is that a nation which condones the torture and caging of its own citizens on a scale more massive than any other on the planet has little to no compunction about doing the same to (mostly) foreign nationals.

Why do I not see the same level of outrage by "liberals" about what is happening in our "regular" prisons as to what is happening to "terror suspects"?

Keep in mind that the prison population soared during the incumbency of Bill "I didn't inhale" Clinton.