The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age
    jollyroger's picture

    "Oh, Habib! Don't let the Americans take you alive--they tortured my cousin Habib and smeared him with menstrual blood!""I will die first, Habib" he replied.

    By jollyroger on Wed, 04/29/2009 - 9:07am |

    With a nod to Al Bundy, I am calling attention to the *other reason not to get a reputation for torturing captives. Your opponents will fight you to the death rather than surrender, right?

    *Since the repugnants snicker (perhaps with justification…)when we allude to the likelihood that the “bad guys” (whoever the fuck they are supposed to be…)will be more likely to torture our brave captives if we torture them, and are otherwise unmoved by the international hearts and minds disaster that a reputation for torturing represents for a nation (Hey, it’s never really springtime for Hitler, is it?), let alone the simple moral outrage that torture appropriately evokes from anyone without a degenerate and malignant heart.

    We are, after all, America; “We do not FUCKING torture”