Sometimes I think this whole world

Is just one big prison yard

Some of us are prisoners

The other of us are guards

B. Dylan

                                           

1. Thumbscrew

2. Heretic's fork

  

3. Lead sprinkler

4. Tongue Tearer

5. The Rack

 

6. Iron Maiden

7. The Wheel

As man has become more civilized over the millennia, he has become better and better at torture. You know torture is really an art rather than a science. Besides wonderful pictures illustrating the mechanics of torture, there are wonderful lists naming these fantastic machines:

I mean everyone knows about thumbscrews. But 'Iron Balls Torture'. Ah what wonderful visions dance in my head over that moniker.  And 'The Drunkards Cloak', I mean I bet it took a long time to come up with that title. Huh? And Scavengers Daughter.  I mean Edgar Allen Poe could not top that one.  Forget the Pit and The Pendulum.  THE SCAVENGERS DAUGHTER.

If I could only get that Pasternak kid from Daily Beast to co-author with me...well we'd make a mint!!!

Now, without taking away from good old crucifixion, you have to hand it to the buggers who came up with this stuff.  But early on there were those naysayers that just thought, hey, some of this stuff is just over the top so to speak.

As early as 866, we find, from Pope Nicholas V's letter to the Bulgarians, that their custom of torturing the accused was considered contrary to divine as well as to human law: "For," says he, "a confession should be voluntary, and not forced. By means of the torture, an innocent man may suffer to the utmost without making any avowal; and, in such a case, what a crime for the judge! Or the person may be subdued by pain, and may acknowledge himself guilty, although he be not so, which throws an equally great sin upon the judge." Despite this, and other please, the practise of torturing victims continued. Medieval Torture was a freely accepted form of punishment in the Middle Ages and was only abolished in England in 1640. (Middle Ages Torture http://www.middle-ages.org.uk/middle-ages-torture.htm)

Now, I wish to get into the purpose of the torture. Primarily, torture was used for rather idealistic purposes, when you think about it. As a Roman Catholic (who has since lapsed into heathenism) I knew that there was a trick to life that only us enlightened people knew about.

Kind of like the magician who knows that rabbits do not really disappear. Unless it was like a feast day for Robin Hood or something.

Or the card shark, who reads the 'tells' of the other players.

Well us RC's had the 'inside info', so to speak. It seems that you could more than just covet your neighbor's goods and goodies, as it were, but you could take them straight out for sixty years--you know like corporate management.

You could kill, straight out without alibis or the defense of self-defense--kind of like a lot of presidential administrations in our history. 

All you had to do to still get to heaven, was CONFESS ALL YOUR SINS. And you would be in heaven with angels and good writers.  Not a lot of sex up there, we just did not have the 'iron balls' of those Muslims to get into that kind of pleasure.

But that was the inside information.  Of course it was assumed that you had to work real hard not to get caught.

Well most of these tools of torture would kill the victim--or perpetrator depending upon your perspective of things. But, hell, I mean why not just cut their head off.  When you think about it they had no electricity in those days although I suppose just tying up the perp outside during a thunderstorm might have done the trick.  But they had the equivalent of lethal injection.  I mean Socrates was just given a nice sip of fun to send him to sleep.

The reason that was not good enough was that the Church wanted to give the buggers a second chance at heaven.  The powers that be in those days just thought, hell, a good confession and the sinner can get to heaven.

So basically the tools of torture solved two problems all at once.  You could get rid of the bugger on earth and, yet, send him to heaven at the same time.  Wow, the philosophical wisdom of those days. What great minds. You see what real religious belief can accomplish when you put great minds to a problem?

Well that was one way to get rid of cognitive dissonance.  Do you not think?

Now we come to a different philosophical bent for the modern day torturer. As I understand it, the MDT does not really wish to kill the perp. He simply wishes to get information, giving the bugger the chance to stay on earth and get to heaven by unburdening himself of all his sins.

I mean, have we come a long way or what?

Now just as an aside here. Sure there is the Jack Bauer--you know the guy with the six DUI's. I really hate the fact that I am not supposed to drive. I mean I do not have a car, have not for years. But most people think I have six DUI's, otherwise I would walk less.

Back to JB for a sec. You see, the idea is that we only have fifteen hours or fifteen minutes or something to get the information before the atom bomb goes off in Peoria. So, the best thing to do is to cut off the guy's foot or left iron ball or little pinky or something in order to get that information.

I mean this is the

The problem is, as far as I know, there was no fifteen second, or fifteen minute or fifteen day limit to all this.  After the first month or so, you probably already have all the info you are ever going to get whether or not it is true or or not. The only reason we kept using our Enhanced Interrogation Torture, was to get false information, get the buggers to tie 9/11/01 to Saddam.

But what kind of torture tools are we using?  They--the powers that be--have categorized this chaos into twenty or so categories, here are some I have played with previously:

1.     Hooding--hoods are placed over the victim's er...detainee's head.

2.     Walling--Plowing a detainee into a wall

3.     Stripping--the interrogators strip the detainee's naked

4.     Slapping--what it says

5.     Manhandling--a term of art so to speak

6.     Humiliating--shaming the detainee in any way possible

7.     Phobic treatments--if the detainee is afraid of something, like dogs, well....

8.     Stress positions--hang them upside down, sideways, make them stand all day

9.     Waterboarding--a wonderful technique for making the rats feel like they are drowning

Well, we just need better names for our tools of torture. Do you not think?

Well that is all the fun I can come up with today folks. Human beings have been torturing for thousands upon thousands of years. But this is just my personal Chapter Two of my Cruel and Unusual series.

Abu Ghrab pix from http://antiwar.com/news/?articleid=2444. Entitled The Abu Ghraib Prison Photos by AntiWar.com

Torture photos from 12 of the Most Horrifying Torture Devices in Historyhttp://www.listaholic.com/12-of-the-most-horrifying-torture-devices-in-h...