OK, look…
“Torture” in Abu Ghraib.
Torture in Guantanamo.
Torture in secret prisons all over the world.
Torture in prisons run by Iraqis inside of Iraq.
Torture torture torture torture torture.
But…why?
Does “torture” even WORK?
Read on.
Number one, no. It doesn’t necessarily work very well. People will say anything under physical duress, just to get it to stop for a while.
But number two is the big one, and it is the dog that has not yet barked as far as I can see. At least not in any media that I have found. We have pharmacological methods to get people to talk that would make that old standby sodium pentathol (the “truth serum”) look like Aunt Grannie’s old herbal tea poultice in comparison. Bet on it. The nexus between Big Pharma and Big Brother..especially SECRET Big Brother…has been extensively covered in books, articles and on the net. The CIA/Army psychedelic experiments of the late ’50s were just the beginning. I was once given a modern painkiller by a mainstream ear, nose and throat doctor that put me into a fugue state so serious that one part of me could not tell the other part to correctly dial the phone to get a friend over to help me. And that was an ACCIDENT. (I threw the shit away once I reassembled myself and that was my last real attempt at dealing with mainstream medicine. Ever.) In that state I could no more have resisted persistent questioning than I could have flown.
Given this undoubted fact (at least as far as I am concerned it is undoubted)…then WHAT THE HELL DOES ALL OF THIS TORTURE SHIT REALLY MEAN?
And all that I can come up with is that it is a psychological continuation of the original shock and awe tactic. That and an expression of the low level of human being that is drawn to fight this war on these levels. A criminal underbelly of the armed and covert forces (Plus the semi-felons hat we now laugihngly refer to as “contractors”. Soldiers of fortune. Hired killers. The hardest and crudest of ex-soldiers. Just as it always was.) that have been attracted to this scene by the sheer criminality of the war on all of its HIGHER levels. Higher levels that are only too happy to let loose these particularly rabid dogs of war in order to use them as…
Terrorists.
Because THAT is what this torture thing is really all about. In fact, that is what this war as it is being fought is really all about. WAS about, anyway, until it turned bad for the torturers.
The prisons, the secret “renditions” (a word Orwell would have loved), the absolutely abominable two faces of the official line. “We do not approve of this nor do we do it” followed right on its heels by “Make it legal.” Right out in plain sight. That ALONE is terrifying.
So…the aim of the torture is not to get information.
It is to terrorize.
And not just Iraqis, either.
ALL enemies of this government.
It could happen to you, me fine droogies. So cooperate. Don’t ask TOO many questions. Do not be rude to bearers of official spin. They have short tempers and long reaches. You might get answers you do not like. Answers with electrodes attached to them. Can you imagine a relatively powerless person who somehow succeeded in attracting Cheney’s serious negative attentions? It scares me just to THINK about it. To tell the truth, I am sometimes frightened to post on these blogs if I find myself disagreeing with the postings of people who I believe are allied with this sort of negative force in some way.
But what the hell…gotta do SOMETHING before they either blow us all up or terrorize us into submission.
Torture as spin.
Only in America…
Sleep tight…
AG