Mark Morford: Fun Bits About American Torture

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Mark Morford: Fun Bits About American Torture

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Fri, 16 Dec 2005 01:07 -0800

 

 

 

 

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Fun Bits About American Torture

In many ways, the U.S. is now just as inhumane and brutal as any Third

World regime. Oh well?

 

- By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist

 

 

Friday, December 16, 2005

 

" We do not torture. " Remember it, write it in red crayon on the

bathroom wall, tattoo it onto your acid tongue because those very

words rang throughout the land like a bleak bell, like a low scream in

the night, like a cheese grater rubbing against the teeth of common

sense when Dubya mumbled them during a speech not long ago, and it

was, at once, hilarious and nauseating and it took all the

self-control in the world for everyone in the room not to burst out in

disgusted laughter and throw their chairs at his duplicitous little head.

 

Oh my God, yes, yes we do torture, America that is, and we do it a

lot, and we do it in ways that would make you sick to hear about, and

we're doing it right now, all over the world, the CIA and the U.S.

military, perhaps more often and more brutally than at any time in

recent history and we use the exact same kind of techniques and

excuses for it our numb-minded president cited as reasons we should

declare war and oust the dictator of a defenseless pip-squeak nation

that happened to be sitting on our oil.

 

This is something we must know, acknowledge, take to heart and not

simply file away as some sort of murky, disquieting unknowable that's

best left to scummy lords of the government underworld. We must not

don the blinders and think America is always, without fail, the land

of the perky and the free and the benevolent. Horrific torture is very

much a part of who we are, right now. Deny it at your peril. Accept it

at your deep discontent.

 

Torture is in. Torture is the tittering buzzword of the Bush

administration, bandied about like secret candy, like a hot whisper

from Dick Cheney's gnarled tongue into Rumsfeld's pointed ear and then

dumped deep into Dubya's Big Vat o' Denial.

 

The cruel abuse of terror suspects is sanctioned and approved from on

high, and we employed it in Abu Ghraib (the worst evidence of which --

the rapes and assaults and savage beatings -- we will likely never

see), and we use it in Eastern Europe and Guantánamo and in secret

prisons and it has caused deaths of countless detainees. And

Rumsfeld's insane level of Defense Department secrecy means we may

never even know exactly how brutal we have become.

 

Torture is right now being discussed in all manner of high-minded

articles and forums wherein the finer points of what amount of torture

should be allowable under what particular horrific (and hugely

unlikely) circumstances, and all falling under the aegis of the new

and pending McCain anti-torture legislation that would outlaw any and

all " degrading, inhumane " treatment whatsoever by any American CIA or

military personnel at any time whatsoever, more or less.

 

All while, ironically, over in Iraq, our military is right now

inflicting more pain and death upon more lives than any torture

chamber in the last hundred years, and where we have recently

discovered the fledgling government that the United States helped

erect in Saddam's absence, the Iraqi Interior Ministry, well, they

appear to be so giddy about torture they might as well be Donald

Rumsfeld's love children. But, you know, quibbling.

 

There is right now this amazing little story over at the London

Guardian, a fascinating item all about a group of hardy hobbyists

known as " planespotters, " folks whose solitary, dedicated pastime is

to sit outside the various airports of the world and watch the runway

action and make intricate logs and post their data and photos to

planespotter Web sites. It's a bit like bird-watching, but without the

chirping and the nature and with a lot more deafening engine roar and

poisonous fumes.

 

These people, they are not spies and they are not liberals and they

are not necessarily trying to reveal anything covert or ugly or

illegal, but of course that is often exactly what they do, because

these days, as it turns out, some of those planes these guys

photograph are involved in clandestine CIA operations, in what are

called " extraordinary renditions, " the abduction of suspects who are

taken to lands unknown so we may beat and maul and torture the living

crap out of them and not be held accountable to any sort of pesky

international law. Fun!

 

It is for us to know, to try and comprehend. The United States has the

most WMD of anyone in the world. We imprison and kill more of our own

citizens than any other civilized nation on the planet. We still

employ horrific, napalm-like chemical weapons.

 

And yes, under the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld regime, we abuse and torture

prisoners at least as horrifically as any Islamic fundamentalist, as

any terrorist cell, to serve our agenda and meet our goals -- and

whether you think those goals are justifiable because they contain the

words " freedom " or " democracy " is, in many ways, beside the point.

 

Go ahead, equivocate your heart out. It is a bit like justifying known

poisons in your food. Sure mercury is a known cancer-causing agent.

Sure the body will recoil and soon become violently ill and die. But

gosh, it sure does taste good. Shrug.

 

Maybe you don't care, maybe you're like Rumsfeld and Cheney and the

rest who think, well sure, if they're terrorists and if they'd just as

willingly suck the eyeballs out of my cat and rip out my fingernails

with a pair of pliers as look at me, well, they deserve to be

tortured, beaten, abused in ways you and I cannot imagine. Especially

if (and this is the eternal argument), by their torture we can prevent

the deaths of innocents.

 

Maybe you are one of these people. Eye for an eye. Water torture for

an explosive device. Does this mean that you are, of course, exactly

like those being tortured, willing to go to extremes to get what you

want? That you are on the same level morally, energetically,

politically and, like Cheney and Rumsfeld, you are dragging the nation

down into a hole with you? You might think. After all, fundamentalists

terrorize to further a lopsided and religious-based agenda. We torture

to protect ours. Same coin, different side.

 

It is mandatory that we all acknowledge where we are as a nation,

right now, how low we have fallen, how thuggish and heartless and

internationally disrespected we have become, the ugly trajectory we

are following.

 

Because here's the sad kicker: Torture works. It gets results. It

might very well save some lives. But it also requires a moral and

spiritual sacrifice the likes of which would make Bush's own Jesus

recoil in absolute horror. Yet this is what's happening, right now.

And our current position demands a reply to one bitter, overarching

question: What sort of nation are we, really?

Thoughts for the author? E-mail him.