Head Games
Watch and pay attention to certain tricks of diversion as Republicans try to muddy the water on torture.
Chris Matthews \'Slams\' Republican on New Torture Information
Abu Ghraib’s unsupervised “amateurs” are the problem – translation: everyone’s seen the pictures – but systematic torture by “professionals” using the exact same methods and motives, following the exact same orders from George Bush and Dick Cheney, is OK because the professional torturers tortured under “carefully-controlled circumstances”.
The thing to remember is this: all torture happens in your brain, whether the sensation of having water start to fill your lungs or the thought that you will never see your family and friends again in your life, or both at the same time. The critical difference for waterboarding done for training, demonstration or entertainment purposes is knowing that the torture will stop and that you won’t be killed. Conversely, the terror of uncertainty is exactly the torture the Bush/Cheney/SERE program – the forced nudity, the dogs, the blindfolds, the isolation, waterboarding, all of it – was designed to inflict. No one much cares whether they’re being terrorized by “amateurs” or “professionals”. Anyone who believes that our “high-value” terror suspects (as well as thousands of others, most of whom were probably innocent of anything) weren’t “tortured” nearly every second we held them captive is a psychological cretin.
It’s bad enough when you find yourself in this position in life. Far worse when someone forces it on you.