Bad American

Once more into the depths dear friends, we find our country is no better as a beacon of human rights than say, Guatemala.

Associated Press

WASHINGTON - President Bush is poised to veto legislation that would bar the CIA from using waterboarding — a technique that simulates drowning — and other harsh interrogation methods on terror suspects.

The president planned to talk about the veto in his Saturday radio address.

Bush has said the bill would harm the government’s ability to prevent future attacks. Supporters of the legislation argue that it preserves the United States’ right to collect critical intelligence while boosting the country’s moral standing abroad.

“The bill would take away one of the most valuable tools on the war on terror, the CIA program to detain and question key terrorist leaders and operatives,” deputy White House press secretary Tony Fratto said Friday.

One more time for the stupid.

When I was trained by Army professional interrogators at the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center School at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, it was reiterated to me over and over by seasoned professionals that torture doesn’t garner any uselful information - people will say anything to make the pain stop.

When I reiterated this to a friend of mine yesterday in my store he asked the million dollar question: why do they do it then?

The answer is simple and sinister for anyone who has bothered to do the research on the subject and observed something otherworldly in Dick Cheney’s smirk: they do it because they enjoy it.

And they want to send a message to the rest of the world when the broken in body and spirit are dumped back home.

Yes friends and neighbors the only real reason to engage in acts of brutality is not to extract information but to spread fear and intimidation.

And deep inside the reptilian brains of many Americans of the conservative persuasion, they intrinsically understand this and support fighting terror with terror. But they don’t want to appear to support wanton brutality in public - it might harm America’s so-called international image.

So they keep repeating what is becoming an old, old, lie - that torture is an effective means of gathering intelligence information.

Even Ted Kennedy, rousing himself from stupor, understands what this tells the rest of the world:

Backers of the legislation, which cleared the House in December and won Senate approval last month, say the interrogation methods used by the military are sufficient.

“President Bush’s veto will be one of the most shameful acts of his presidency,” Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., said in a statement Friday. “Unless Congress overrides the veto, it will go down in history as a flagrant insult to the rule of law and a serious stain on the good name of America in the eyes of the world.”

He noted that the Army field manual contends that harsh interrogation is a “poor technique that yields unreliable results, may damage subsequent collection efforts, and can induce the source to say what he thinks the (interrogator) wants to hear.“

Deep down Ted Kennedy must know the truth but he dare not say it: that many people in the politics and the military in Washington have launched their own war of terror on an Arab world they see as hostile and subhuman. And these techniques are designed to spread fear and terror in the Arab world.

But we’re not like that, right?

Be that as it may, expect that your sons and daughters serving in the US military will not be accorded any of their Geneva Convention rights when they are captured. So don’t complain about it - your President and Republican members of Congress have just written off the lives of future American POWs.

Expect that there will now be a ‘torture race’ in which both sides ratchet up the cruelty to make their points.

I’m sure the conservatives will say in that case that at least we let more of our tortured prisoners live than those subhumans we’re fighting. Beautiful, isn’t it?

By the way, the CIA was never bound by any Army field manual or any law. They have traditionally operated outside of the law and the military chain of command and generally only answer to the Director of Central Intelligence or his designated chain of command.

And again, there is a growing feeling of fortress America and a general disdain for world opinion both among the neocons and conservatives in the US. Many people seem proud that the world is beginning to think we’re acting like tantrum throwing children with dangerous weapons.

As in: “nuke their ass, take their gas.”

Believe me when I tell you this - you can either make your peace and like in some measure of coexistence with the rest of the world or you may stand as victor over a smoking radioactive ruin of a planet.

I just don’t think were turning into the kind of country Thomas Jefferson would have been proud of.