WaPo Wants Pro-Torture Crowd to Get Away With Murder: Pardon Me While I Vomit Blood, Ma'am?

What is f*cking wrong with these people?

WaPo uses up column-inches on a column on why the US pro-torture crowd really ought to get off scot-free. And it's a real knee-slapper. Well, forehead-slapper, in this case.

Catch this:

"In the end, [stopping additional US torture] may be more important than punishing those who acted wrongly in pursuit of what they thought was right."

Oh. So all is forgiven if the torturers' hearts were in the right place?

Final Solution much, ma'am?

Pol Pot killing fields excusable since motivated merely by misguided childhood dweams of agwawian utopia?

(Slaps forehead. Hurts self. Groans.)

Hey lady, torturers' hearts are always in the right place, had you not noticed?

People are always doing really shitty things for the very best of reasons. That's why we have the rule of law.

Or used to. Till the feckless, reckless, out of control Bushist fascists came along, fueled by hubris and contempt for the rule of law. Oh, and you know, by a sharp streak of sadism .

But hey. That was then, this is now. Marcus [e.g. the establishment] wants these guys [Rummy, Cheney, Gen. Geoffrey Miller, etc.] to get away with it.

Well, I don't. How about you?

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Oh, and don't miss:
How Do I F*ck My Base? at Jesus' General.
Mike Flugennock
Obama's Divisive Choice of Rick Warren
The Daily Howler
In Which VastLeft Apologizes For Being Prematurely Correct

Nothing to It But to Do It

Gates orders Pentagon to draw up plan to shut down Gitmo.

How hard was that, really?

Iraq Shoe-Tosser Was a US Torture Victim, Brother Asserts

Well, really what a fucking surprise.

One must congratulate the shoe-tossing torture survivor for his forbearance, must one not?

Cheney: The Leader of the (pro-torture) Pack

What, you mean Vice-President "Dick" Cheney?


One is shocked! Shocked!

Obscure Bloggers Stick Bamboo Slivers Under Brennan's Fingernails, Force Him Out, Boo Hoo

See, it used to be all Bill Clinton's fault.

Then it was all Hillary Clinton's fault.

Now it's pussified anti-Brennan-y leftwingy obscure bloggerses' fault.

Got that?

Silly obscure bloggerses get lacey panties in a twist about, um, you know, justa little teeny tiny bitta torture? Why are they such pussies? Why won't they get over it? Why they make such beeg steenk about nada? Why have obscure bloggerses no cojones? Why? Why? Why?

Who are they waiting for? Valerie Plame?

Sheesh!

.

Glenn Greenwald.

Vastleft's "The Perfect Is the Enemy of the Good."


----
John O. Brennan

Stupid New York Times Blog Treats Torture as Panties-in-a-Twist Lefty Trivia

God help me.

"The torture issue is particularly volatile for some supporters of President-elect Barack Obama . . ."

[coughchokecough]

Please pass the bamboo slivers. Then we'll talk about volatility, k?

Incest Practitioner Turns His Mind Toward the Dharma?

Doing no evil whatsoever
Practice virtue perfectly
Tame your mind completely
This is the teaching of the buddha

O-kay. The roots of the lotus are in mud. So far so good.

But can't we be skeptical? Sure we can.

Incest [predator] Josef Fritzl says he's turned to Buddhism - and wants doctors to help cure him so he can be reunited with his wife Rosemarie.

Evil Fritzl spends much of his 23 hours a day in his cell studying the peaceful Far Eastern philosophy and is considering formally changing his religion in prison.

Speaking through his lawyer Rudolf Mayer, Fritzl said that he has found a lot of comfort in reading Buddhist literature and finds the religion "fascinating".

Fritzl first discovered Buddhism on a family holiday in Thailand but has only started studying the religion in depth while behind bars.

Prosecution sources remain suspicious of his Buddhist conversion.

"It's a bit late in his life to present himself as a man of peace. If he ever gets reincarnated, what would he come back as? Even making him a worm would be an insult to worms," said one.

Fritzl's facing the rest of his life in jail after imprisoning his daughter Elisabeth as a sex slave in a home-made cell under the family home in Amstetten, Austria. She was locked up for 24 years where she gave birth to seven of his children. An eighth child was miscarried.

But the dungeon demon has astonished medics by asking them to cure him so he can start a new life with his family.

"I realise now that I am not normal, and I see that somebody who did what I did cannot be regarded as normal.

"With the help of therapists I want to know what the real reasons are for why I behaved like I did and I want to get treatment, I want to be healthy again at some point," he told his lawyer.

And the deluded demon says he hopes therapy will lead to a reunion with wife Rosemarie and their children.

"I hope one day that we will be able to live together again," he said.

Fritzl, 73, has dismissed psychological reports that his cold, emotionless upbringing turned him into an incest monster.

"I don't want to blame my mother for the way I am. There's been enough bad things said about her. I don't know what the answer is and there is no solution in simply saying she is responsible for everything," he said.

Towards the end of her life cold-hearted Fritzl kept his mother locked up.

"She was not a bad woman although she had psychological problems that led her to be aggressive right up until she died - something which got worse in old age when she suffered from dementia as well.

"I forgave her a long time ago for what she did for me because I know she had a very hard life. At the end she always wanted to dress herself in rich clothes and it was one of the saddest days of my life when I went to her funeral and saw how few people had bothered to turn up," he explained.

Fritzl has also begun studying law behind bars to help him beat the charges he faces - murder, rape, slavery, incest, imprisonment and abuse.

Now it has emerged that Fritzl has been pouring over legal books about Austrian law looking for loopholes to save his neck.

While he will admit four charges which would put him in prison for a maximum of 10 years - he rejects the two more serious allegations that could see him locked up for life.

He claims that the charges of murder and slavery have been manufactured to make sure he is never free again.

Fritzl told his lawyer Rudolf Mayer: "I am guilty, but only to the first four charges, not to slavery and not to murder. The truth is that I am not a murderer either by accident or deliberately.

"I can understand how Elisabeth feels. I know that she hates me and that she is terrified I might one day again see freedom. But the fact is that many of the things she has said are just not true."

Astonishingly he admits to threatening to kill his cellar family with gas or electric shocks - but claims he never intended to go through with it.

"It is true that when they were underground I threatened them with murder, and led them to believe they would die from electricity shock or be gassed if they tried to escape. But I am not a murderer," he told his legal team."

Hmm. Hope this guy, while he's studying Buddhism so hard, gets to the part about karma, cause & effect.

Let's Be Thankful We're Not Forgetting Why It's Important Not to Treat Other Sentient Beings Like Pieces Of Sh*t

Mumbai. 121 dead 328 injured as of :2:33 ESTsting. WaPo update here.

One case of incest. Well, two really. With nine kids to show for it.

Boy held captive by father for half of life.

Austrian Incest Dad.

Foster parents in 'house of torture" get one year in jail each.


Stepfather convicted in Poutre case: child beaten with basebal bat, thrown down stairs.






Note: I had just finished writing this post when I went to check out what Jesus' General is up to. Seems like MJS of JG is riffing on similar themes: Sharing the Good News of Utter Despisement.

My Tax Dollars At Work Torturing Sentient Beings at Gitmo. Swell.

A story that turns one's stomach. And if it doesn't, there's something really wrong with one's stomach.

Trapped at Gitmo.

The only people . . ."he sees [are] the camp guards who bring his meals. He has had no other human contact. The glaring lights in his cell are on 24 hours a day, seven days a week. When we left the cell, we could hear Saber shouting -- brief, truncated cries. We could not understand what he was saying."

Bush Admin to Obama: Shutting Down Gitmo "Won't Be Easy"

Not as easy as leading the US into moral and fiscal bankrupcty, anyhow.

"Stop Wasting Time With This Pig"

Guess I picked the wrong day to quit complaining about saving Western civilization (sic) through torture and savagery, eh?

I love primary sources. Check out the link to actual army documents, above (that would be "savagery').

In the meantime, ponder what it means that someone in the army thought this shit up, wrote this shit down, and made a whole shitty actual manual out of it.

It's filled with helpful directions on just the right way to hurt others.

Maybe you have to be a f*cking card-carrying buddhist to think this is totally perversely inherently morally f*cked up but I sure hope not.

Here's a teeny sample:

"The statement 'stop wasting time with this pig' means to discontinue the current training tactic and take a break."

"Us" and "them." There's a theme here. See, once you label them as "pigs" they ain't human, so you can do to them whatever you f*cking like, mm-kay? Well not just what you like. You can do whatever the manual says you can do.

There's a whole section on "DEGRADATION." This includes three sub-sections, the "insult slap," the "stomach slap," and "stripping." The insult slap target is right below the cheekbone, and you have to stop doing it if the detainee tries to duck. No really. The stomach slap is used to shock and intimidate the detainee. Stripping "consists of forceful removal of detainees' clothing. In addition to degradation of the detainee, stripping can be used to demonstrate the omnipotence of the captor [ licensed clinician part of NBFH raises an eyebrow, says neutrally, "Oh? Tell me more." here] or to debilitate the detainee."

Then, there's "PHYSICAL DEBILITATION TACTICS." These get written down in log-books. If you write stuff down it makes it official and ok, see.

Anyhow, there are more fun sections, so I'll be talking about that later, but first I have to go to work. I look forward to describing one stress position, kneeling on the ground with one's arms out holding weights. I like that one in particular because it resembles the way some abusive parents torture children, who then grow up and see me and ask me why their parents did that to them.



And pardon me while I complain as well about information suppression, PBS not daring to air the documentary "Torturing Democracy" before the election because well you know somebody in the pro-torture crowd might be offended by an anti-torture show and complain and/or somebody might have to actually deal with what we have actually done and/or why would we want an informed electorate anyway, eh? Lets just go with mob rule. Namaste to PBS, yep, my tax dollars at work supporting suppression of information about torture yep you betcha (wink wink).

Hat-tip to reader AT.

Your Tax Dollars at Work: Torture At Gitmo

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico -- An Algerian prisoner at Guantanamo Bay has accused his guards of using [water torture] on him, his lawyer said Friday, marking the first allegation that the harsh interrogation technique was used at the U.S. military base.

A human rights commission of the Organization of American States, after being informed of the alleged abuse, said Friday that it has asked the U.S. State Department to ensure that Djamel Ameziane is not mistreated and receives medical care.

Officials at Guantanamo and the Pentagon did not immediately respond to requests for comment, but they have said repeatedly that all Guantanamo detainees are treated humanely.

Ameziane, who has been imprisoned at Guantanamo since February 2002 without being charged with crimes, told his lawyer Wells Dixon that guards at the base placed a water hose between his nose and mouth and ran it for several minutes. Ameziane said they repeated the procedure several times, nearly suffocating him.

"I had the impression that my head was sinking in water," Ameziane, 41, wrote his lawyer. "I still have psychological injuries, up to this day. Simply thinking of it gives me the chills."

According to Ameziane's account, during the same incident the guards applied pepper spray all over his body, hosed him down, and left him shackled and shivering in wet clothes in front of an air conditioner in an interrogation room.

Confessed Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and at least two other "high-value" detainees imprisoned at the base in southeast Cuba were waterboarded -- an interrogation tactic that produces the sensation of drowning -- but they were waterboarded at CIA secret prisons before they were transferred to Guantanamo.

Dixon said in a telephone interview the alleged abuse happened early during Ameziane's confinement at Guantanamo.

"He was held down and someone essentially shoved a hose in his face, forcing a stream of water down his nose, mouth and into his lungs I guess," Dixon said.

Lawyers with the Center for Constitutional Rights, a law group that represents scores of Guantanamo detainees, on Aug. 6 filed a petition on behalf of Ameziane with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in Washington, asking that it intercede with the U.S. to protect the detainee.

The group said the commission, which is an autonomous organ of the OAS, agreed and issued "urgent precautionary measures" with the U.S. on Wednesday.

An official with the OAS-affiliated group confirmed it has asked the State Department to ensure he is treated humanely, given medical treatment and not transferred to a country where he could be tortured.

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights is empowered to request that a member state adopt specific "precautionary measures" to prevent human rights abuses, but can also urge the Inter-American Court of Human Rights to order that measures be taken, and can submit cases to the court. The United States is a member of the OAS.

Via Raw Story, link here.

First, Do No Harm

PSYCHOLOGISTS CLASH ON AIDING INTERROGATIONS
From the New York Times:

"They have closely studied suspects, looking for mental quirks. They have suggested lines of questioning. They have helped decide when a confrontation is too intense, or when to push harder. More than those in the other healing professions, psychologists have played a central role in the military and C.I.A. interrogation of people suspected of being enemy combatants.

But now the profession, long divided over this role, is considering whether to make any involvement in military interrogations a violation of its code of ethics.

At the American Psychological Association’s annual meeting this week in Boston, prominent members are denouncing such work as unethical by definition, while other key figures — civilian and military — insist that restricting psychologists’ roles would only make interrogations more likely to harm detainees.

Like other professional organizations, the association has little direct authority to restrict members’ ability to practice. But state licensing boards can suspend or revoke a psychologist’s license, and experts note that these boards often take violations of the association’s ethics code into consideration.

The election for the association’s president is widely seen as a referendum on the issue. Human rights groups, including Amnesty International, plan a protest on Saturday afternoon.

And last week, for the first time, lawyers for a detainee at the United States Navy base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, singled out a psychologist as a critical player in documents alleging abusive treatment.

“It’s really a fight for the soul of the profession,” said Brad Olson, a psychologist at Northwestern University, who has circulated a petition among members to place a moratorium on such consulting.

Others strongly disagree. “The vast majority of military psychologists know the ethics code and know exactly what they can and cannot do,” said William J. Strickland, who represents the Society for Military Psychology before the association’s council. “This is a fight about individual psychologists’ behavior, and we should keep it there.”

At the center of the debate are the military’s behavioral science consultation teams, informally known as biscuits, made up of psychologists and others who assist in interrogations. Little is known about these units, including the number of psychologists who take part. Neither the military nor the team members have disclosed many details.

Defenders of that role insist that the teams are crucial in keeping interrogations safe, effective and legal. Critics say their primary purpose is to help break detainees, using methods that might violate international law.

In court documents filed Thursday, lawyers for the Guantánamo detainee Mohammed Jawad asserted that a psychologist’s report helped land Mr. Jawad, a teenager at the time, in a segregation cell, where he became increasingly desperate.

According to the documents, the psychologist, whose name has not been released, completed an assessment of Mr. Jawad after he was seen talking to a poster on his cell wall. [Someone noticed Jawad was having psychotic symptoms] Shortly thereafter, in September 2003, he was isolated from other detainees [a really wrong thing to do with someone you have noticed is having psychotic symptoms] and many of his requests to see an interrogator were ignored. He later attempted suicide [what a surprise] , according to the filing, which asks that the case be dismissed on the ground of abusive treatment.

The Guantánamo court is reviewing the case. Military lawyers have denied that Mr. Jawad suffered any mental health problems from his interrogation [tell it to the Marines]. On Thursday, the psychologist in the case invoked Article 31 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the military’s equivalent of the Fifth Amendment.

“This is what it’s come to,” said Steven Reisner, an assistant clinical professor at the New York University School of Medicine and a leading candidate for the presidency of the psychological association. “We have psychologists taking the Fifth.”

Dr. Reisner has based his candidacy on “a principled stance against our nation’s policy of using psychologists to oversee abusive and coercive interrogations” at Guantánamo and the so-called black sites operated by the Central Intelligence Agency.

The psychological association’s most recent ethics amendments strongly condemn coercive techniques adopted in the Bush administration’s anti-terrorism campaign. But its current guidelines covering practice conclude that “it is consistent with the A.P.A. ethics code for psychologists to serve in consultative roles to interrogation and information-gathering processes for national-security-related purposes,” as long as they do not participate in any of 19 coercive procedures, including waterboarding, the use of hoods and any physical assault."

Yes, yes. Of course.

It's sort of like having a medical doctor present during "interrogations" to revive a torturee so they become awake enough to torture all over again, is it not?





Full story here.

Department of No F*cking Comment: If You Are Easily Triggered, Don't Read This Story Either

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Here's a real Philadelphia story, via the Sydney Morning Herald.

Starved Disabled Girl Was Failed At Every Turn.

For days before Danieal Kelly died in a fetid, airless room - made stifling hot by a midsummer heat wave - the bedridden teenager begged for something to drink until she could muster only one word: water.

Unable to help herself because of her cerebral palsy, she wasted away from malnutrition and maggot-infested bedsores that ate her flesh. She died alone on a putrid mattress in her mother's home, the floor covered in feces. She was 14 but weighed just 19.05 kg.

The nightmare of forced starvation and infection that killed Danieal while she was under the protection of the [Philadelphia, PA] city's human services agency is documented in a 258-page grand jury report released this week that charges nine people - her parents, four social workers and three family friends - in her ghastly death.

The report describes a mother, Andrea Kelly, who was embarrassed by her disabled daughter and didn't want to touch her, take her out in public, change her nappies or make sure she had enough fluids. It portrays Daniel Kelly, the father who once had custody of Danieal, as having no interest in raising her.

And it accuses the city Department of Human Services of being "uncaring and incompetent."

"It was this indifference that helped kill Danieal Kelly," an angry District Attorney Lynne Abraham said. "How is it possible for this to have happened?"

The report should "outrage the entire Philadelphia community" and bring about "earth-shattering, cataclysmic changes" at the Department of Human Services, Abraham said.

Andrea Kelly, 39, the only defendant charged with murder, was ordered held today without bail. The social workers - suspected of falsifying home visits and progress reports in the case - face charges ranging from child endangerment to involuntary manslaughter. The family friends are accused of lying to the grand jury about the girl's condition before her death . . .[and the story actually gets worse . . . .]

So, you know, really I just have no f*cking comment.

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Dalai Lama Squeezes Hand of John McCain

And McCain claims this is not torture?




Plus, hat tip to Corrente, a disturbing piece from Salon on domestic surveillance.

Department of Spare the Rod Spoil the Child

Letting the child's punishment really really fit the child's crime, eh?

WEBSTER – A child abuse suspect who police say repeatedly threw her 8-year-old stepdaughter down a flight of stairs was arrested yesterday in Florida.

Cara LeBlanc, 29, will face charges of first-degree assault and criminal restraint when she returns to New Hampshire, police said.

WBBH-TV in Fort Myers reports that Cara LeBlanc waived extradition in a court hearing this morning.

Webster police Lt. Phil Mitchell said the girl suffered kidney and liver damage, three broken vertebrae in her neck and three broken ribs as a result of the attack Thursday.

"I've never seen a child-abuse case this severe,'' he said yesterday. [Note from NBFH: I have.]

The girl's body was also covered with black and blue welts from having been repeatedly whipped with a belt over a nine-hour period Thursday, he said. The beating ended when the belt broke, police said.

Police say LeBlanc dragged the girl up the stairs by her hair seven times, then pushed her down each time. Leblanc also tied the child to a door by her hands and feet and force-fed her cereal during the ordeal, police said.

Mitchell said the girl was originally listed in critical condition at Boston Children's Hospital.

"She's getting better and is expected to recover, but it's going to take some time before she's well again,'' he said.

Police interviewed her Monday at the hospital.

The girl's father, Dan LeBlanc, took her to Concord Hospital Saturday, police said. Professionals there called police.

She was later taken to Boston for treatment of liver and kidney problems.

Two other children who were in the home during the assault -- a 7-year-old boy who police say is LeBlanc's biological child and a 5-year-old girl -- were not harmed. Mitchell said the state Division for Children, Youth and Families received a court order Monday to take custody of the children.

This is not the first abuse allegation investigated at the LeBlanc home, Mitchell said. Two years ago, police filed a complaint with state officials, but an investigation concluded it was unfounded.

More recently, a complaint was filed with the DCF by a former high school boyfriend of Leblanc's, Bill, who asked that his last name not be used.

He said LeBlanc is the mother of his 11-year-old daughter, who has lived with him for the past several years but still visits LeBlanc.

In March, he said, his daughter told him the 5-year-old was punished by being made to run up and down the stairs of LeBlanc's home for 20 minutes without stopping. The girl was also locked in her room from time to time, Bill said.

"I reported it to the state, but they said it was unfounded,'' he said.

Don't get me started.

No, really, don't.


Full story here.

And a related Spare the Rod Spoil the Child kinda story, here, via Buddhist Jihad.

What Goes Around Comes Around: Rummy, Dirty Bush, Big Dick Recycle Commie Brainwashing at Gitmo

This is a nice story.

It's the kind of actual in-depth journalism that, had the NY Times been so doing all along, one wouldn't still be thinking of the New York Times as belonging to the media whore media.

The cool thing is that Rummy/Dirty Bush's 21st century All-American torture techniques were originally designed by their original designers TO ELICIT FAKE CONFESSIONS.

Haha.

I mean, really, hahaha.

WASHINGTON — The military trainers who came to Guantánamo Bay in December 2002 based an entire interrogation class on a chart showing the effects of “coercive management techniques” for possible use on prisoners, including “sleep deprivation,” “prolonged constraint,” and “exposure.”

What the trainers did not say . . . was that their chart had been copied verbatim from a 1957 Air Force study of Chinese Communist techniques used during the Korean War to obtain confessions, many of them false, from American prisoners.

The recycled chart is the latest and most vivid evidence of the way Communist interrogation methods that the United States long described as torture became the basis for interrogations both by the military at the base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and by the Central Intelligence Agency.

Original report, here.

Rummy, Cheney, Bushist Fascists: Torture Gets Them Hard, Says Beaver (no, I'm not making this up)

Why aren't all the members of the pro-torture crowd safely rotting in jail?

On Tuesday, December 2 2002, Donald Rumsfeld signed a piece of paper that changed the course of history. That same day, President Bush signed a bill to put the Pentagon in funds for the next year. The US faced unprecedented challenges, Bush told a large and enthusiastic audience, and terror was one of them. The US would respond to these challenges, and it would do so in the "finest traditions of valour". And then he signed a large increase in the defence budget.

Elsewhere in the Pentagon, an event took place for which there was no comment, no fanfare. With a signature and a few scrawled words, Rumsfeld reneged on the tradition of valour to which Bush had referred. Principles for the conduct of interrogation, dating back more than a century to President Lincoln's famous instruction of 1863 that "military necessity does not admit of cruelty", were discarded. He approved new and aggressive interrogation [torture] techniques that would produce devastating consequences.

I don't know why they're not safely rotting away in jail.

[Staff Judge Advocate Lt. Col. Diane] Beaver recalled that smothering was thought to be particularly effective, and that [Major General Michael E.] Dunlavey, who'd been in Vietnam, was in favour because he knew it worked.

The younger men would get particularly agitated, excited even: "You could almost see their dicks getting hard as they got new ideas." A wan smile crossed Beaver's face. "And I said to myself, you know what, I don't have a dick to get hard. I can stay detached."

Beaver confirmed what Dunlavey had told me, that a delegation of senior lawyers came down to Guantánamo well before the list of techniques was sent up to Washington. They talked to the intelligence people, they even watched some interrogations. The message from the visitors was that they should do "whatever needed to be done", meaning a green light from the very top - from the lawyers for Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and the CIA.

I hope they begin rotting away in jail very soon, and for a very very long time.



Full story at the Guardian, here.

NYT Op-Ed to Tibetans: Shut Up and Die, Already

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Enough of the Great Battle of Hill v. Barry.

Let's perk up with stories about the brutal genocidal Han Chinese oppression in Tibet!

(Say whut? Nothing-to-see-there-move-along.)

I don't know why the Red Chinese even bother to send out their brown-nosed army of propagandists, but they do. Maybe just in case George Bush reads a newspaper? Anyhow, today's propagandist rants in the New York Times today, here. But don't waste your energy linking.

Basically, it says that since the big bad Red Chinese are so very big and so very bad, the Tibetans should just give up and die, and the rest of their world-wide supporters should just shut up and die, too, because we little mosquitoes are just so um you know so annoying.

O-kay! If you say so, Patrick!



(Why did the New York Times even bother? Because they can't publish Judy Miller's tripe anymore, so they've gotta have someone to fill the tripe quota?)

Bush Torture Drives Aussie Hicks Insane -- No Release from Inner Gitmo, Ever

It all depends upon what is is.

And the rest of it depends on what isn't isn't.

It depends upon what Dirty Bush's Bushist fascists declare isn't torture.

Sticking bamboo slivers under people's fingernails, though a classic oriental method of torture, isn't torture to Dirty Bush's pro-torture crowd.

Why not? Two reasons.

1. It doesn't kill you, the pain merely makes you wish you were dead.
2. The people we're doing it to aren't really people. They ain't yoo-man, they're terrists. Ee-vil terrists.

It's like stepping on bugs. We don't care. They're just bugs.

OK, so one of these bugs, an Australian bug named David Hicks, held for some time at Hotel Intercontinental Abu Ghraib Gitmo, was released from Gitmo, and now is about to be released from an Aussie jail.

But the torture he endured there has made it impossible for him to leave. The Dirty Bushists have scrambled his brains so bad that he's a useless, agoraphobic, broken shell.

The Melbourne forensic psychiatrist Paul Mullen, who assessed Hicks at the Guantanamo Bay prison for terrorists in February 2005, said the confinement, institutionalisation and the removal of all initiative would have induced agoraphobia, obsessional behaviours and irrational fear.

Terry Hicks, who saw his son twice at Guantanamo Bay and has visited him regularly at Yatala, said: "It was not good - he had an anxiety thing. They told him he had no choice, he had to go [to Holden Hill] and they put him in the van and took him away. He just regressed back to Guantanamo Bay and he had such anxiety they had to bring him back."

Hicks's agoraphobia and panic attacks are hallmarks of prisoners who have spent prolonged periods in confined isolation. Professor Mullen said he would be suffering psychological damage from his trauma, which included being imprisoned in a container in the hot sun, believing he had been left there to die.

And that's what it's all about, isn't it? Preserving the important "moral values" of Western civilization?

Such as regarding other humans as bugs.

Then squashing them under one's foot.

While singing "it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas."

Because it so is.


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