Pudgy Indian

A man called Cecil and Celeste's show "More Talk Radio" stating that torture was fine and necessary and he was glad that the United States has now made it legal for the United States to commit torture because, as he alleges, "they attacked us first!"

I would have asked the man if he had signed up for the military. If not, then to get down there and do it and I would have had the engineer hang up on him. I don't want to talk to a man who supports this type of behavior but is not willing to go out there and do it himself. He'd rather have others do it for him while he is safe at home.

Celeste told him that if he supported torture then he should be accepting of the fact that it could happen to him. Why should it be legally only for the United States to commit torture while for others it is a crime? If someone captured and tortured him it should be just as OK as it now is for the U.S. to do it to darkies from other nations. His logic was "they attacked us first" so it's OK for the U.S. to torture and not others.

But they didn't attack us first. I have read many books that discuss how the U.S. has imposed its will upon other nations using the "rule of force." They back genocidal and militaristic regimes such as Indonesia's genocidal activities under Ford and Clinton. This in order to secure shipping lanes and oil. The CIA helped in a coup that put Saddam in power because his government would favor U.S. corporate interests. It was when Saddam tried to nationalize the oil that he became a threat and GHW and GW have had illegal wars there. The CIA put the Shah of Iran in power because his cruel behavior towards his people would insure that U.S. oil interests were served. And the list goes on and on. The U.S. attacked first. They just used economic force and militarized regimes that would keep U.S. corporate interests at heart. You can read a lot about U.S. behavior toward the world at large in Noam Chomsky's book, "Hegemony or Survival."

I've heard that over 95% of the information gathered from torture is useless. This being because most people will tell you whatever it is you want to hear in order to get you to stop hurting them. For example, I've heard of one man tortured at Guantanamo stating that he was Osama Bin Laden's driver. Not only that, he told them he was Osama Bin Laden, he had operations to make himself shorter and to look different.

In my opinion, the caller should be sent to the front lines.

In my opinion, the U.S. has legalized torture because they've been committing the crime for a long time and now they were in threat of being called on it. That means lost elections; loss in corporate cash flow into the 2 party system; that means the threat of prosecution but since when do the ELITE go on trial for their horrific crimes?" The U.S. is committing a crime and decided to make it legal so they wouldn't have to face justice for it. Kind of like they don't have to face justice for the genocide against the Native Americans.