1.10.2009

When Is Torture Bad?


While it's now accepted by many of our elected representatives in the United States that torture is good, there are apparently some who still believe acting like barbarians is a bad thing:
The son of ex-Liberian President Charles Taylor was sentenced to 97 years in prison on Friday in a landmark torture case that grew out of a U.S. investigation into arms trafficking in Liberia.
But according to a respected news poodle:
Bill O'Reilly: "In a perfect world, a noble nation like the USA would not need to submerge killers in water. But thousands of dead Americans have changed the rules. To allow captured killers wearing civilian clothing and fighting for no nation the privilege of name, rank, and serial number status is not only stupid, it could be lethal."
Not sure if he's talking about the thousands of dead Americans from 9/11 or from Iraq - or maybe he still thinks they are the same. But I guess, that means O'Reilly and others of the same opinion would support Charles Taylor, and his "Demon Forces" as they called themselves, in their battle against terrorism:
Taylor Jr. was tapped by his father to command an anti-terrorist unit.
Following in the footsteps of Charles Taylor. That's something to be proud of.

UPDATE:
"This is not the America I know," President George W. Bush said after the first, horrifying pictures of U.S. troops torturing prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq surfaced in April 2004. The President was not telling the truth. "This" was the America he had authorized on Feb. 7, 2002, when he signed a memorandum stating that the Third Geneva Convention — the one regarding the treatment of enemy prisoners taken in wartime — did not apply to members of al-Qaeda or the Taliban. That signature led directly to the abuses at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay. It was his single most callous and despicable act. It stands at the heart of the national embarrassment that was his presidency.