Once again there is a national debate on the use of torture. To our everlasting shame as a nation, the debate is once again not over whether we ought to be doing it, but on whether it works.
Now that Osama Bin Laden has been killed some members of the Republican Party are attempting to abscond with some of the credit by asserting that President Obama was only able to find him because they tortured some poor wretch back in 2003.
To his credit, Senator John McCain refused to sit still for that odious pile of equine fecal matter and declared once more that torture does not work. As a former North Vietnamese prisoner of war, he is uniquely qualified to make that pronouncement. Really though, any one who actually thinks about the matter should be able to reach the same conclusion as Sen. McCain. Torture is good for only one thing; getting someone to confess to whatever you want them to say, regardless of whether or not it is true. This is why it is the tool of choice for totalitarian regimes such as Iran under the Shah, the Inquisition, the KGB, and the Gestapo. It enabled us to get lots of people to confess to acts of terrorism and to implicate others just to make the hurting stop. Who knows, some of them might have actually even been guilty. We don't really know and we can't try them because the information is garbage and because we broke the law.
Still, people like Rick Santorum and Dick Cheney defend the use of "enhanced interrogation techniques" in spite of all the evidence against it, even from experts in the field. One can be forgiven for wondering at this point if there isn't some dark erotic fantasy at work deep in the hidden corners of their psyche. What is hidden in their closet?
Is it a pile of these?
Now that Osama Bin Laden has been killed some members of the Republican Party are attempting to abscond with some of the credit by asserting that President Obama was only able to find him because they tortured some poor wretch back in 2003.
To his credit, Senator John McCain refused to sit still for that odious pile of equine fecal matter and declared once more that torture does not work. As a former North Vietnamese prisoner of war, he is uniquely qualified to make that pronouncement. Really though, any one who actually thinks about the matter should be able to reach the same conclusion as Sen. McCain. Torture is good for only one thing; getting someone to confess to whatever you want them to say, regardless of whether or not it is true. This is why it is the tool of choice for totalitarian regimes such as Iran under the Shah, the Inquisition, the KGB, and the Gestapo. It enabled us to get lots of people to confess to acts of terrorism and to implicate others just to make the hurting stop. Who knows, some of them might have actually even been guilty. We don't really know and we can't try them because the information is garbage and because we broke the law.
Still, people like Rick Santorum and Dick Cheney defend the use of "enhanced interrogation techniques" in spite of all the evidence against it, even from experts in the field. One can be forgiven for wondering at this point if there isn't some dark erotic fantasy at work deep in the hidden corners of their psyche. What is hidden in their closet?
Is it a pile of these?
Be seeing you.
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