Possibly true story about a golf-ball-sized grenade:

http://maxine-log.blogspot.com/2007/03/fore-playin-through-hard-way.html

The other day, jestaplero's exchanges with Glenn on the issue of how to proceed with Gitmo detainees prompted me to blather on about the teevee show "Law and Order", by way of making a point. Not a particularly memorable screed, I hasten to add.

And earlier today, some cranky person whose alphanumeric nym isn't worth researching was talking about politics as depicted in "The West Wing". (FWIW, a friend urged me to check out that show during it's first season. I never could get past feeling that it was obviously a sanitized, idealized goo-goo's view of government. High production values notwithstanding, my bogon detectors could not stop twittering.)

Such teevee dramas always seem so clankingly designed and intended to manufacture consent. I'm not suggesting that the government actually has some sinister security agency generating or supervising the production of this teevee-prop; rather, my assumption is that such shows are produced by people who totally buy in to the shows' concepts-- especially when it proves to be a cash cow.

And now there is this "24" anti-ethos inoculating the teevee audience, and seeding it with memes and memelets justifying and incipiently extolling torture and other extra-legal, anarchic, sociopathically violent action in the name of righteous state terrorism.

In the world of the teleplay, Bauer is a protagonist, a hero. The audience is meant to fully identify with him; thrillers, by definition, depend on the audience rooting for the hero to prevail against a plethora of threats, dangers, and obstacles. Thus, the viewer is manipulated into becoming focused on the fate of Bauer, to the exclusion of his opponents and victims. Fans seem to revel in Bauer's angst and agon; what job could be tougher than to sell one's soul to fulfill one's patriotic duty to the country?

So it's never really about the victims, but only how their mandatory victimization affects Our Hero.

I can't help but recall the beginning of Kurt Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse-Five", a preamble in which Vonnegut goes to visit his old WWII war buddy Bernard V. O'Hare to reminisce and chat about their WWII experience. O'Hare's wife is upset that Vonnegut intends to write a novel about WWII. She is hostile and frigid towards Vonnegut, and finally tells him what's bothering her. With apologies to the Vonnegut Estate, I'll paraphrase and say that Mrs. O'Hare barked that, in effect, the last thing the world needed was a WWII memoir in which war would be portrayed as gallant and exciting and heroic. And feature characters that will be perfect for film stars like John Wayne and Frank Sinatra.

Vonnegut mollifies the woman by promising that his book will never have characters that could be played by John Wayne or Frank Sinatra.

_____________________________________________________

Vonnegut, in his usual prescient way, often pointed out that fiction could not be dismissed as harmless and inconsequential, insofar as unsavory, false, and corrupt ideas and belief, like the ones that so irritated Mary O'Hare, indeed float around in the social ether and give structure and definition to unwary minds.

You [steveindallas] have both a son and a brother who have served/are serving in both Afghanistan and Iraq?

Hm, good catch. It will be interesting to see Steve's answer.

"Losing you soul and the soul of a country is worse. And that's what you (if you're real) and they are doing.

Going back to WWII where a lot more was at stake - how come they didn't feel legalizing waterboarding was necessary? How come they felt that Nazis and Japanese should hang for it?"

Because back then Zionists were not in charge of U.S. Foreign Policy.

The United States defense department and foreign policy apparatus has been hijacked by pro-Israel and Israeli spies, operatives, and sympathizers. They have changed the nature of this nation. We have become Israel. We now have to fight Israel's enemies, we have assumed Israel's tactics, and we have adopted Israel's values.

We are now the United States of Israel.

America is a Jewish Colony: Olmert reveals all

http://atheonews.blogspot.com/2009/01/america-is-jewish-colony-olmert-reveals.html

Chris Sinnard:

Paul Daniel Ash:

However, if you have information to the contrary: specifically, that systematic torture was U.S. policy as directed by the White House, I'd be very interested to see it.

He would, but it's TOP SECRET. He could tell you, but then he'd have to kill you.

We'll just have to waterboard it out of him.

Tubing somebody to feed them isn't necessarily inhumane treatment, but at a lot of places where it gets done, it is. "Force feeding" probably refers to the latter? The conditions at Guantanamo aren't humane in some camps to begin with. But notice carefully in the news, you'll see differentiation in the treatments and implicit disagreement with people who are informed. Susan Crawford's list of treatments and that cited in the New York Times editorial differ conspicuously in that the latter doesn't admit that sleep deprivation and prolonged isolation. The NYT ran a big story a while back on how wonderfully prolonged isolation worked on a violent offender in a New York jail. They obviously disagree with, and think they are in a better position to judge than, the Convening Authority who actually reviewed al Qahtani's files.

I ran into tons of that researching the Aafia Siddiqui case. Very few American papers admit that extreme isolation is anything newsworthy, most don't find strip and cavity searches out of the ordinary unless there are other circumstances present (members of the opposite sex, for instance). And Adam Liptak wrote an entire book on the history of prisons in the U.S. and failed to notice that the Quaker penitentiaries in Pennsylvania were judged cruel and had some real horror stories at the time. By contrast, Stuart Grassian presented convincing evidence that extreme isolation led to permanent damage.

steveindallas

As you know, most here think you a liar.

However, let us pretend this myth was true for a moment.

So? So what? You have no right to torture these enemy soldiers simply because you want to do so. After all, you and your murdering friends went half way around the world to kill people.

The rules of engagement in this situation prevent you from torturing these people. Don't like that --- go be a big city cop instead. -- heru-ur

I don't think he is a liar. I have heard first hand accounts of similar things happening. A grenade or cell phone found in a vagina? Not hard to believe at all. Doesn't change anything though. If you are a person with honor you do what an American is supposed to do. Arrest them and take them in for questioning. Torture isn't questioning. It is torture. As a former Marine, if I had been in that situation or at Abu Ghraib for instance, torture, humiliation... all that shit would have been done after they threw me in the brig.... because none of it would have happened with me standing there.

I have been away from military service for 14 years now and people like steveindallas and incidents like Abu Ghraib have convinced me that what little honor there was to be found within the American military has got to be damn near completely extinct.