Help, I’m being tortured

That’s right. I’m being tortured. I’m being tortured by the constant drumbeat from the left equating what we did to three terrorists with actual torture.

---

Actually, I take that back. It insults people who have actually undergone torture. Out of respect for those people, let me downgrade that to “I’m annoyed”. I’m going to borrow a trick from my wife, who is an elementary school teacher. It’s called “Fill in the blank.” There are two groups of statements, followed by some sentences with blanks in them. Fill in the blanks using the statements from column A and Column B where directed. There are no right or wrong answers. Just good clean fun. Here goes.

Column A (What we did to them)

1. Putting someone in a room with a caterpillar, while being expressly forbidden to tell the terrorist that it is a stinging insect.
2. Grabbing someone’s shirt and slamming him against a wall that is especially built to be flexible enough to absorb impact while making a loud sound so as to scare him without actually hurting him, and even fitting him with a C collar to protect him from whiplash.
3. Pouring water on a guy’s head in a clinical setting, under conditions that make it almost impossible for him to be injured or killed, in the same manor that frat boys and boy scouts have done for years, only made much safer by the presence of a physician just in case something went wrong.
4. Playing loud music and flashing bright lights.
5. Keeping someone awake.
6. Prolonged isolation.
7. Making someone be naked.
8. Making someone be cold, but with a doctor standing by in case they get hypothermia.

Column B (What they do to us)

1. Sawing off someone’s head while they are alive and aware, using a dull, rusty knife.
2. Peeling the skin off of a person, such as an American soldier.
3. Drawing and quartering a person by tying each arm and leg to a vehicle, then driving the vehicles slowly in four directions.
4. Shoving large splinters under someone’s fingernails.
5. Using pliers to crack someone’s teeth, and then agitating the roots.
6. Attaching electrodes to a person’s private parts, and running current through him.
7. Making someone watch their wife and daughters being raped and killed.
8. Beating the living crap out of them.
9. Putting cigarettes out in a person’s eye.
10. Water boarding with no controls because the idea isn’t to get intelligence, but to kill someone in a terrorizing manner. At the very least, even if the object wasn’t to kill, if the person died, it was no big deal.

Okay, let’s have some fun with the sentences.

1. If it is torture to (insert any item from column A), then shouldn’t we have a tougher word for (insert any item from column B)?
2. Conversely, if (insert any item from column B) is torture, shouldn’t we have a milder word for (insert any item from column A)?
3. We know that (insert any item from column B) does not produce reliable intelligence, but we do we know for sure that (insert any item from column A) does. For example, it led us to Osama Bin Laden.
4. When terrorists do (insert any item from column B) to our soldiers or civilians, it is for punishment, not intelligence gathering, so therefore, they don’t really care if what they hear has any truth to it. In contrast, when (insert any item from column A) is used, it is strictly for intelligence gathering and will stop as soon as the interrogators are sure that they have learned all they can.
5. When our interrogators are (insert any item from column A), they have a chain of command and a process for getting permission to use another technique, and will not go to the next technique up until written orders are passed back down the chain of command. When terrorists do (insert any item from column B), they do it for fun, and will escalate techniques just for the hell of it, and get all their friends to join the party.

There is a lot of simplistic thinking that goes on with this subject. People seem to think that our interrogators are just having fun by torturing people, then going home to kick their dogs, slap their wives, beat their kids, and pull wings off of flies. The reality of it is, they are just normal Americans, with some special training. They play catch with their sons in the backyard. They coach softball. They beam with pride at their daughters’ piano recital. They collect paychecks that they wish were bigger. They are single, married, divorced, widowed, gay, straight, catholic, Jewish, protestant, atheist. They are you and me. As to what they do, it’s not as simple as politicians (and other simple people) would have you think. The questioning we subject terrorists to consists largely of questions where the answer is already known. This allows the interrogator to instantly gauge the veracity of the information they are getting. It also consists of a lot of questions where the truthfulness is easily checked out. They intersperse questions that they don’t already know the answer to, and the terrorists don’t know which is which. In the instances of the people (and I use the word “people” loosely) we used enhanced interrogation techniques on, once they started cooperating, there was no need to continue with the enhanced interrogation. Regular interrogations became very conversational. At that point, they were broken. One of the worst gasbags in this issue is Jesse Ventura. He is fond of saying “Give me Dick Cheney, an hour, and a water board, and I’ll have him confessing to the Sharon Tate murders.” He parrots it so often, that I feel like I may be committing trademark infringement by quoting him on it. What a dingleberry. Getting a confession from a terrorist is not, and never has been the goal of enhanced interrogations, or even regular interrogations, especially in the case of Khalid Sheik Mohammed and the other two guys we were toughest on. We don’t need them to confess. We know what they did. We caught them in the process of doing it, in many cases. What we needed was information to help stop other people from committing the same types of crimes. We needed tips to help us curtail the plot to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge, or to intercept the plot to smuggle liquid explosives onto plane at Heathrow Airport, then blow them up over American Cities. We needed to find other terrorists. Or to find Osama Bin Laden. Or to find Osama Bin Laden. Or to find Osama Bin Laden. America does not torture. And just as my sarcastic title of this piece is an insult to people who have actually undergone torture, so is comparing what we did to a FEW terrorists with actual torture. Using the word “torture” instead of “enhanced interrogation” makes a great sound bite, but it’s dishonest, disrespectful, shallow, and stupid. A politician who uses the word “torture” in this cavalier fashion deserves to be booted out of office. Or maybe they should be subjected to some of the things listed in column A. Notice I didn’t suggest that they be subjected to some of things listed in column B. Would you like to know why? Easy. That would be torture. That’s the way I see it.