I have received emails from a few of you asking what I think about this "torture trial" going on in the U.S. Part of the reason I haven't said anything about it is that I am under-versed in the nuances of the Geneva Convention, plus I tend to disregard most of what Amnesty International complains about in any given year. While I feel they do a bang-up job alerting the world to atrocities around the globe, such as systemic rape and female genital mutilation in third world countries, I feel they also have a tendancy to let common sense go by the wayside in an effort to look for trouble where none exists. Perhaps it is an occupational hazard for those of a bleeding heart nature - they get so involved in doing good deeds that eventually their minds snap, and they can only see the evil in people, despite claims to the opposite.
I can only offer opinion on this torture business, bacause as I said, I don't have a full grasp, so I will not pretend that I do. I leave such dishonesty to the left, and CBS.
Torture, as I define it, is physically painful, and psychologically damaging. Cutting a prisoner's fingers or toes off would be torture. Starvation would be torture. Threatening to rape his wife - torture. But making fun of him, and humiliating him? That's just highschool.
I have been half-heartedly following this story since it broke last year, and I have yet to hear anything done to these prisoners that I myself did not suffer worse in my teens. I was a bullied child. Beaten regularly for being poor, fat, having bad hair. I wasn't cool. I frequently had to change my locker because my previous one had been glued shut or burned. I was a geek, and I was smarter than most of the dope addicts I went to school with. Where the f**k was Amnesty International when I was 14? If highschool isn't a system that endorses and promotes abuse, I don't know what would be. But did I write letters to my local MP, or set out press releases? No. I just shut up and got on with it, and I was a scared kid with no one to turn to. If I could do it, then surely these "men" who have been arrested on suspicion of far worse crimes that I ever committed can get through it and cut the whinging.
It is also my understanding that in order to deal with a terrorist - especially one of Islamic descent who believes in honor above all - is to break his spirit a little. I'm not saying turn the guy into an emotional vegetable, but bring him down a notch or two. As a military interrogator, you probably have to fit the method to the person. And in the case of Islamic men, to be ridiculed by a female, or to be humiliated by one of the Great Satan's army, is just the ticket.
It is also my contention that the U.S. is paying lip service to these trials, because frankly, they have better things to do right now. Such as feed a bunch of ungrateful people overseas, and bring a democratic election to a country that Amnesty International must have thought was doing just fine on its own. The United States has been fighting a losing battle against anti-American propaganda. So it is trying to clean up its image by scapegoating these soldiers. Just like CBS scapegoated a few of its producers, instead of out and out placing the blame on Dan Rather, who had more than enough clout to refuse to report the Bush story if he had any concerns as to its authenticity. But that puts me a little off topic.
If frustration is a form of torture, that I am going to write to the UN, and tell them I am a victim of political torture and humiliation, at their own hands. I am frustrated and haunted by the rhetoric coming from the Left. What, Mr. Annan, do you suggest I do about it?
