As mentioned last night, the interrogation techniques the CIA wants to use to question terrorists have been revealed, and one is to make terrorists stand for long periods of time. The always excitable Andrew Sullivan is quick to point out that forcing people to stand IS EXACTLY WHAT SOVIET GULAGS DID!
So, before you start supporting this interrogation technique, you have to ask yourself whether you’re comfortable being as bad as Stalin – or a McDonald’s employer – by forcing people to stand for long periods of time. Is it really worth saving hundreds or even thousands of innocent lives if that information was gained by making someone stand? Is it?
IS IT?!
Well, I won’t stand for this… because standing for this would only be torturing myself.
If I wasn’t already sitting down with my breakfast beer, and surfing blogs; I too, would stand up in protest.
Once, I was forced to stand up for well over 20 minutes by a member of the goverment. I was also forced to preform degrading acts. Holding my head back, arms out, and touching my nose. Standing on one foot, ect. So I know their pain.
All torture and hurt feelings should be outlawed. Imagine all the good will that will come raining down upon us, when we get climb back to the moral highground.
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Gotta go now, it’s a little chilly in here, so I need to adjust the Tstat. No torture in my house!
Nobody EVER expects the comfy chair!
It was really cool, though of the Guardian to get that little accent mark over the second a in Guantanamo. The local papers don’t do that. Of course, one of the local papers is the San Francisco Chronicle, which spells “Guantanamo” as “O-A-K-L-A, no, that’s not it . . . uh . . .”
What?! Standing for long periods of time? Wearing the same clothes as everyone else? Eating crappy food? Deprived of sleep? Forced to spend hours in ridiculous temperature extremes? Working until muscles fail? No privacy? Man, those poor bastards. I’m glad I never had to endure that…oh wait, basic training, Fort Sill, 1987. Never mind.
Torture needs to be clearly defined: chopping off fingers, toes, hands; skinning, pulling fingernails, gouging out eyes, that sort of thing–brutality that accomplishes nothing. Everyhting below that is simply coercive questioning techniques.
Torture had been redefined as any act or conditions that would cause discomfort or inconvenience whether permanent, temporary or imagined.
Example: “We could only find a 1Gb iPod at Best Buy, it was either that or get the 2Gb Rio from iRiver and I’m NOT getting a [spit] offbrand, but that’s not the worst of it, then I had to STAND in line for 5 whole minutes, before the cashier, swiped my card and bagged it up for me. I tell you, it was pure torture.”
“I had to STAND in line for five whole minutes”.
spacemonkey,
That would have never happened under a Clinton admistation. I don’t recall any instance of standing, waiting, hurt feelings, global warming, homelessness, terriorism, ect., during the time when we where loved (ie, the Clinton/Carter years).
Hang in there spacemonkey.
November 06, and 08 will bring an end to all that. At least as reported by the MSN.
That ain’t even the half of it.
We must not make them uncomfortable. I recommend La-Z-Boys for the torturers, and stainless steel dissectin tables for the prisoners, since they are easy to clean afterwards.
Many people prefer to be able to lie down, so perhaps if some luxurious leather padding were placed on the bed of a guillotine . . .
CAR-DI-NAL FANG???!!!
Maybe if we had used a combination of the comfy chair, the fluffy pillows, a cup of sleepy time tea, and the Barbara Streisand box set, we would’t be having this discussion.