PGHIMC - Pittsburgh Independent Media Center

Cruelly Unusual
by Paul Heller Wednesday, Mar. 05, 2003 at 7:59 AM
pfheller@cox.net (email address validated)

What's wrong with torturing someone like Khalid Shaikh Mohammed?

Imagine that, someone who weighs so heavily on our terrorism scale finding a safe haven for a year and a half... in Pakistan. How could our "good friend" (George W. Bush's words) General Pervez Musharraf, yet another nuclear nationalist that nobody ever elected, allow for such a thing?

Never mind. Those who love, believe in and support the Bush Administration would endeavor to take the credit for this pleasant surprise, and they will do so without shame. But it was the expertise of two Clinton hirees, the CIA's George Tenet and the FBI's Robert Mueller, that wound up being responsible for the capture of Osama bin Laden's right-hand man. So let's all give Mister Bill a pat on the back.

Now there are actually human-rights activists who have expressed horror at the idea that Mohammed may be tortured during his interrogation. And the White House says we will not do such a thing. "There are a lot of ways short of torturing someone to get information from a subject," says one U.S. official. What you don't notice in the newspaper is the big wink that goes along with that. Damn right we're going to torture him; of course we're going to.

Why should the government have any qualms about doing so, even if by proxy through some other nation, like Morocco for instance, that approaches the interrogation of prisoners with something less than butterflies in their stomachs? After all, the CIA trains South and Central American military and paramilitary personnel how to extract needed information from subjects, at the School of the Americas, housed at Fort Benning in Georgia. And the CIA did a pretty good job of torturing captured Viet Cong during the Viet Nam War, albeit with mixed results (we lost).

So what's wrong with swatting the guy around with the phone book a little? This man has admitted on the air that he was the mastermind behind the September 11th plot, and is believed to have planned numerous other attacks against American interests, some that worked, some that didn't. Why can't we give him paper cuts on his eyeballs, or tap on his testicles with a tack hammer? How much importance can Mohammed's personal suffering assume in the face of the crimes he has committed, and more important, crimes that are on the docket for the future? It's no big deal to rip out his fingernails with a hot pair of pliers... they'll probably grow back.

Knowing that this stuff goes on in other countries, and it does, there are those in power who probably figure that we would be taking the slow road by not torturing this murderer. Sleep deprivation and exposure to Picasso are indeed torturous events, but many a fine shortcut exists, and these men who get paid in the form of tax dollars can ill afford to be patient with a man who knows as much as this one. Why would some form of mild electrocution be off-limits in such a dire matter? We can't wait on this terrible information; start rifle-butting the bottoms of his feet already.

For that matter, since we have no problem with torturing such a bad guy, we could take advantage of the fact that our captive is a Muslim. You know, shove a few pounds of bacon down his throat, kind of like the Atkins diet. Or saw off a hog's head and make the bastard wear it around like a Halloween mask for a few weeks.

But when you think about it, Americans get tortured every day. Ask John McCain if he's comfortable with that route. Or ask Sister Dianna Ortiz, a Catholic nun from Kentucky who was arrested, imprisoned, gang-raped and tortured in Guatemala, where she claims an American overseer was present. Perhaps even poor old Abner Louima could chime in on the conversation. He knows all about torture, American style... but then, Louima was a foreigner, and his torturers did go to prison.

Anyway, don't fret about it. The White House has indicated that Mohammed will be treated humanely, although they acknowledge the gravity of obtaining information from him. To outright torture him would be in violation of an international treaty that we signed. God knows we don't break treaties in this country. It also happens to be the law of the land that we don't cause anyone to experience "extreme pain and suffering, whether physical or mental." God knows our government won't violate the Constitution, especially not when the law has been upheld time and again by the Supreme Court. God knows we trust the Supreme Court to do the right thing.

Bush himself had something to say about all this. "I told the American people this is a different kind of war against al-Qaida, that we're going to have to hunt them down one at a time, and over the weekend they saw what I meant." I love it when he does that... poses a separation between himself and the rest of us, as seen in his use of the pronouns "I" and "they". Because of the un-American ideas exhibited routinely by his administration, I think that's how it should be.

www.hellermountain.com

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