Regarding torture and Guantanamo
Regarding these two issues, the rationale in favor seems to be largely based on two fictional characters -- Jack Bauer in the TV series 24 and Jack Nicholson's character in A Few Good Men.
Real life people who have been there, seen it done, perhaps done it themselves, have repeatedly made it clear that the "ticking bomb" scenario is, as one of them said "So far from reasonable possibility as to be absurd to even consider."
Still, people watch the show, and for some seriously sexually sick humans (and I include our former Vice President and his hench-creatures in that category) the idea and/or fact of torture acts as a sort of viagra.
Former CIA agent and novelist, the late Edward Whittemore, put it this way in Sinai Tapestry : "...they were appalled by Strongbow's assertion that any military expedition was merely a disguised sexual sickness, more specifically a profound fear of impotence... Thus armies were raised, he said, because it was likely their raisers could raise nothing else."
As to Guantanamo, my reaction to the famous "You can't handle the truth" line in that play was immediate. "No colonel -- YOU can't handle the truth. The truth is, you're washed up in a tropical tidepool. You're never going to get to be a general. They've put you, for whatever reasons, in a place where the biggest threat is some Cubano farmer taking potshots across the wire. What YOU can't handle, colonel, is that your career is over and the Marine Corps have tested you and found you wanting."
So the internment of people suspected of being terrorists is just the latest excuse to hold on to a piece of another country's land. I wondered about Gitmo when I was in the Marines and still wonder about it. What the hell is Gitmo about? Polishing up an old award that the Marines won in 1898? Some real-estate version of the Mameluke sword? Having an outpost to hold off the naval invasion of the USA? Whatever -- it is Cuban land and we only shame outselves with what they do there.
This latest pile of steaming crap about "We can't have those terrorists in American jails. These are evil people."
Right and the jail breaks of Charles Manson and Timothy McVey and the Unibomber, et al are proof that ... they HAVEN'T escaped? NONE of them? Ok, a bit of sarcasm may be inappropriate. The point being, they ARE in an American jail -- the one in Cuba.
Has ANYONE ever escaped from Pelican Bay?
You'd think the people who make such huge profits from our prison system would leap to embrace the idea of building a NEW escape-proof dungeon where no prying journalistic eyes can go.
But if they were rational they wouldn't be doing what they're doing in the first place.
Still they like money -- so how about an escape-proof facility where the public can come and pay $25 each to throw feces at the prisoners? $50? $100? The media serving the powers that be have gotten people scared enough that it could be a money-machine that would pay for itself.
Feel free to use the idea.
Real life people who have been there, seen it done, perhaps done it themselves, have repeatedly made it clear that the "ticking bomb" scenario is, as one of them said "So far from reasonable possibility as to be absurd to even consider."
Still, people watch the show, and for some seriously sexually sick humans (and I include our former Vice President and his hench-creatures in that category) the idea and/or fact of torture acts as a sort of viagra.
Former CIA agent and novelist, the late Edward Whittemore, put it this way in Sinai Tapestry : "...they were appalled by Strongbow's assertion that any military expedition was merely a disguised sexual sickness, more specifically a profound fear of impotence... Thus armies were raised, he said, because it was likely their raisers could raise nothing else."
As to Guantanamo, my reaction to the famous "You can't handle the truth" line in that play was immediate. "No colonel -- YOU can't handle the truth. The truth is, you're washed up in a tropical tidepool. You're never going to get to be a general. They've put you, for whatever reasons, in a place where the biggest threat is some Cubano farmer taking potshots across the wire. What YOU can't handle, colonel, is that your career is over and the Marine Corps have tested you and found you wanting."
So the internment of people suspected of being terrorists is just the latest excuse to hold on to a piece of another country's land. I wondered about Gitmo when I was in the Marines and still wonder about it. What the hell is Gitmo about? Polishing up an old award that the Marines won in 1898? Some real-estate version of the Mameluke sword? Having an outpost to hold off the naval invasion of the USA? Whatever -- it is Cuban land and we only shame outselves with what they do there.
This latest pile of steaming crap about "We can't have those terrorists in American jails. These are evil people."
Right and the jail breaks of Charles Manson and Timothy McVey and the Unibomber, et al are proof that ... they HAVEN'T escaped? NONE of them? Ok, a bit of sarcasm may be inappropriate. The point being, they ARE in an American jail -- the one in Cuba.
Has ANYONE ever escaped from Pelican Bay?
You'd think the people who make such huge profits from our prison system would leap to embrace the idea of building a NEW escape-proof dungeon where no prying journalistic eyes can go.
But if they were rational they wouldn't be doing what they're doing in the first place.
Still they like money -- so how about an escape-proof facility where the public can come and pay $25 each to throw feces at the prisoners? $50? $100? The media serving the powers that be have gotten people scared enough that it could be a money-machine that would pay for itself.
Feel free to use the idea.
posted by Saintperle at
1:58 PM
