Torture Nation; Part 2

According to John Yoo, the President can decide to torture anyone he wants, because international law doesn't bind anyone. Treaties are not binding, at least on this group of idiots. Torture, according to Yoo, requires permanent injury, organ failure or death to be "torture."

This is a sound-powered field telephone.


What is not readily apparent is the calling crank. When you want to make a call to the other phone on the line, you turn a crank rapidly and it makes a squealing sound on the other end. This shipboard version shows the crank:


They are also used to torture people. What you do is attach the two leads from one of these telephones to the body of the torture victim; you then turn the crank rapidly, which sends a painful electrical current through the victim. In South America, the cops liked to attach the leads to the genitals. In Russia, the cops attach them to the earlobes and make a "phone call to Putin."

By John Yoo's definition, that would not be torture.

So I propose this: Let's do that to John Yoo and then ask him if the thinks that is torture. Let's douse him with ice water, hang him up by his wrists in a very cold room and then ask him in ten hours if he thinks that is torture. Let's do the full range of CIA "interrogation methods" on him, including waterboarding, and see if he still holds to his idea. We can also do this to John Ashcroft and Alberto Gonzalez, for that matter. I will wager that it will take very little time at all for them to change their minds on this issue.

This way, they can have first-hand experience in what they have brought about: The destruction of the reputation of the United States as a nation that operates by the rule of law, by respect for human rights. John Yoo provided the intellectual (if that term can be applied to over 80 pages of feces-smeared reasoning) basis for reducing the United States to a nation that operates by the whim of the Executive, which makes us no different, other than scope, from any of the many tinpot dictatorships of the last several decades.

This is not something where we can say "we've gotten rid of those guys, we're back to normal." (Ask the Germans how that has worked for them.) This stain on our national soul, on our national honor, will take a very long time to wash out.

We can start by asking the University of California's Berkeley School of Law why they saw fit to hire a torturer to teach law students about international law. Nowhere does he mention on his bio that he wrote a memorandum advocating the use of torture.

I guess we can consider ourselves lucky that the Columbia School of Journalism never got a chance to hire Joseph Goebbels.