Torture This…

New “evidence” apparently shows that the President of the United States (of America) has sanctioned the torture method known as “waterboarding”. As some of you may know, waterboarding is designed to fool the subject’s brain into thinking the body is drowning, thereby provoking extreme panic and the subsequent physiological responses that occur, leading to added humiliation.

Now, torture was, for centuries, a preferred and accepted method of interrogation – hell, sometimes it was even used on allies just to present that little extra incentive to stay in the co-op. These days, we’re supposed to be more civilized, more advanced, more humane, and less of a pack of total barbarians. That’s in theory, at least. We have, in fact, in many ways not evolved at all since the times we now preferable call “the dark ages”, and the self-dilusion that we have put ourselves at the mercy of is wearing us down.

You have to ask yourself, do we really care that someone was tortured? Do we really care that someone died? Just today, it was shown that on average, 16 civilian citizens die every day in Iraq as a consequence of the war.

Also, ask yourself this; did you really, truly, honestly think that the Bush administration didn’t approve of the “interrogation techniques” applied to suspects, or combatants, or whatever, apprehended in the war on terror? Stop being so surprised.