I think it was his eye! yes, it was this! He had the eye of a vulture --a pale blue eye, with a film over it. Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold; and so by degrees --very gradually --I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye forever.
---Poe, Tell Tale Heart
Instrument of Torture
Between Iraq and a Hard Place
for release 09-18-06
Washington D.C.
When is someone going to state the obvious? The only wars that we are fighting are the ones that we started, and there is no such thing as a War on Terror.
Neither the Republicrats or the Demicons have the guts to step out of the 'We Are at War' mentality.
We are NOT at war. We are dealing with a few bad actors. The demolition of the Trade Towers was not an act of war, it was an act of vandalism. It was a sucker punch. It was done by wing-nut religious gang members. They have no army of conquest poised on our borders. There are no missiles leveled at us. They have no means to overwhelm us. In short, they are criminals.
But they have achieved their goal. I'm not talking about the wailing and gnashing of teeth caused by the physical disaster of 9-11, I'm talking about how the vandals have caused us to change our way of looking at the world. In the post 9-11 world, it's OK for us to surrender our dignity just to get on an airplane. It's OK to torture if you have a slick new name for it. How about 'intense interrogation?'
Bush wants us to amend the Geneva Conventions. It's sort of like retro-legislation. We reserve the right to do just what we have been doing.... use cattle prods on the genitals, the iron boot and the rack, and as long as we can call bamboo splints under the fingernails an extreme manicure then we are protected under the law.
They can't have it both ways. We are reminded again and again that we are 'at war'. If we are at war (which we are NOT) then we must treat the prisoners in that war according to the Geneva Conventions. Name rank and serial number is all we should be interested in.
For some years I was part of the Mujahideen in that other phony war, The War on Drugs. In that conflict, you didn't want to fall into the hands of the Mexican Federales. They amended the Geneva Conventions to suit their own purposes just like the Bushites are proposing. One of their methods of interrogation was similar to waterboarding. They would put duct-tape over the victim's mouth and then shake up a Coca-Cola and squirt it up his nose. The victim would think that he was drowning. It gave a whole new meaning to Coke up the Nose. To him it was the Real Thing.
One day, many years ago, I was sitting in The Lion's Pub in Dallas. I was drinking Heineken as I recall. The Lion's Pub was a hangout for SMU students and local bohemians like me. I was engaged in conversation with a young Arabian foreign exchange student. He was drinking Heineken as well. He was a lapsed Muslim. We were talking about competition and fair-play. The Marquis of Queensbury rules came up. The Arab student said, "A typically naive Western idea....to give the opponent an even chance."
The Bushie's have become very adept at exploiting the fear that was caused by 9-11. They keep fanning those fires with the bellows of constant repetition. But now they find themselves between Iraq and and hard place. The body count keeps going up day after day. They don't want you to think about this. They want you to think about fear and torture and gay marriage or anything that draws attention away from the historical blunder represented by the war in Iraq. A typically naive political idea....to give the public an even chance.
In old Trinidad, I also fear
The situation is mighty queer
Like the Yankee girl, the native swoon
When she hear der Bingo croon
Drinkin' rum and Coca-Cola
Go down Point Koomahnah
Both mother and daughter
Workin' for the Yankee dollar
--Morey Amsterdam
