Jim Austin

His previous columns are archived HERE.

JIM AUSTIN

Torture American Style

PUTNEY, VT | The glitch in AG Mukasey's otherwise acceptable stable of judicial opinion was his puzzling confusion over the question of "waterboarding." It really is a dandy technique, much superior to old school methods.

Attaching electrodes to the genitalia or driving burning bamboo splints under the fingernails is all well and good but, in these days of runaway litigation by victims and nosey prying by the international press, we need a method that doesn't leave marks.

Waterboarding takes a prisoner to the brink of death by drowning and then brings him back. Sure to loosen the tongue and get them to divulge the location of the ticking time bomb. Works for Jack Bauer on "24" right?

I absolutely do not understand why our government wants to legitimize torture. I don't see any upside to this. We always have and always will have spooks and sadists in our employ that will go to any lengths to obtain information. Why is it necessary to make it legal?

Why force this humiliating and anti-democratic atrocity down our throats and the gullets of the rest of the world. Haven't we sabotaged our own foreign policy enough with warmongering based on lies so transparent that even evangelicals are shuffling their feet and rubbing the back of their necks.

We are now members in good standing of a dubious club, along with other slimy rogue nations who sanction torture as a matter of policy. One comes to mind immediately...Sadaam Hussein's little corner of heaven in Iraq had a pretty nasty record. And after our flimsy web of lies concerning WMDs and Al Quaeda associations fell apart, didn't Big Brother George tell us that we really invaded Iraq because Sadaam was a very bad man and his people needed their freedom?

We don't need further evidence of the bloody-minded intractability of this administration. However do any of these chicken hawks that send our young people into battle consider the consequences when the tables are turned?

When Bush and his henchmen use the Geneva Convention and our own constitution for toilet paper, what do you think will happen to our American "detainees" who wind up in the hands of a foreign power?

I don't think they care one bit. The troops are just cannon fodder to them, pawns in the game to control oil and eventually the planet. It's not even a conspiracy. Conspiracies happen in secret. These maniacs are throwing human rights, including American human rights, into the wood chipper right out in the open.

Schumer and Feinstein together with all the Republicans on the judiciary committee indicated that they would confirm Mukasey because "well...he isn't Alberto Gonzales." This is an interesting White House tactic. After the worst attorney general in history resigns, choose someone to take his place that is "less" a lickspittle White House butt boy. This is tantamount to having Cheney resign and then proposing that Tourquemada take his place. Sure, Tourquemada the Grand Inquisitor is a fiend who tortured thousands but at least he's no Dick Cheney.

One interesting side note to this little attorney general foofaraw is that it is causing so little concern at the White House. Where is the howling rage and rending of garments by functionaries and officials? Where are the accusations of treason against those that would block Bush's nominee? Maybe the answer is that they don't care. Why wouldn't this lawless pack of autocrats be happy to have no attorney general? No attorney general equals no annoying oversight for the next atrocity. Just a thought.

Our country is at its lowest moral ebb in history. Not since FDR herded Japanese-Americans into prison camps has our government been as guilty of an institutional breech of human rights. We torture, we practice "rendition." We incarcerate people without charge or trial and now Bush wants it all on thick creamy document paper with a big red seal and signatures by our courageous representatives. We are Syria with bigger weapons and a stricter immigration policy.

I cannot help but think that if we are going to torture and coerce individuals we probably carry this attitude over to our dealings with other nations. What's going on behind the scenes?

What pressure was put on Tony Blair to crawl up on Bush's lap and lick his face while sending young British men into Iraq to slaughter and be slaughtered by a faceless enemy? Do we negotiate with allies now or do we squeeze them until they agree? If most of America can't stomach the outrageous behavior of our administration, how must the Italians feel or the Poles or the Spanish?

Now, the only legal opposition to this rabid dog administration is rolled on their bellies and submitted. With Mukasey as attorney general, torture will be legal. We will about face and march back into the early 1500s. Even when given the reigns of power our disloyal opposition will do nothing to try and stop these intestinal parasites that are killing this country. I'm sure the Democrat's strategy is to let them inject their diseased policies deeper and deeper into the marrow of our body politic with their FEMA disasters, vetoes of children's health care and their modern-day American "lebensraum" then pounce during the 2008 elections. If true, then they are traitors to this country.

If their strategy works and they are swept into office with majorities in both houses and a brand new executive, then we will simply be trading one immoral bag of slimy politicians for another. I suppose I could leave the country. Or maybe I should write a few more columns like this one and wait for rendition. Someplace warm please, George.