That Whole "Torture" Thing
So...it's "back." It never really went anywhere. But it's getting play again. John McCain led the Senate to a 90-9 vote reaffirming that it's not something we should do, even though the White House threatened a veto. Now the White House seems like it will just ignore it and keep on doing it.
Which brings me to my first question. If it's so important to torture people for information, why are we killing them? Dead men tell no tales right? Ooooooh, it's to scare the others into talking. Riiiiiiiight.
Lets run through that real quick. First, you kill a guy you suspect is pretty dumb. He doesn't have what you need. Now, you bring the next guy in while you drag the corpse out. He's scared. He tells you something. Now, he's a bad guy, right? You can't believe the first thing he says. So you smack him around a bit and the story changes. Now, he's probably just changing his story to get you to stop. So you beat him a little more and sure enough his story changes again. Lather, rinse, repeat until he is dead.
It doesn't matter what "10 minutes to a nuke going off" movie plot scenario you cook up. You never know when people are lying to you no matter how much you beat them. To quote Nice Guy Eddie:
"If you f cking beat this prick long enough, he'll tell you he started the goddamn Chicago fire, now that don't necessarily make it f cking so!
Which brings me to the next idiotic bit. Commander in Chief. I saw a promo where some character told the president that if she wasn't ready to torture somebody then maybe she wasn't ready to be president. Okay. That's just stupid. That person is fired, on the spot. But no! They are still in the show smack talking to the president later on. WTF? As to the logic of torture, see above.
That we have to have these discussions, as a society, worries me. Ask yourself why we condemn other countries when they do it. Ask yourself why it was wrong for Saddam to do it. Ask yourself what makes it okay for us to do what others can't. The answer is that there is no rationalization for it.
