Relishing War / War Crimes

…..When I looked at these photos, I did not see snapshots of simple brutality or a breakdown in military discipline. After more than a decade of studying the Philippine military’s torture techniques for a monograph published by Yale back 1999, I could see the tell-tale signs of the CIA’s psychological methods. For example, that iconic photo of a hooded Iraqi with fake electrical wires hanging from his extended arms shows, not the sadism of a few “creeps” but instead the two key trademark’s of the CIA’s psychological torture. The hood was for sensory disorientation. The arms were extended for self-inflicted pain. It was that simple; it was that obvious….. Continue Reading →

…..Perhaps the clearest indication of sheer decadence, however, is the emergence of what can only be called “torture chic” in certain sectors of our ruling classes. That it is not universally considered bizarre and outlandish that a president and most of his henchmen would spend so much of their political capital on publicly gaining the “legitimized” authority to torture people, and that they would be able to carry along most of the major ruling political party and (apparently) the vast majority of the most self-conscious and eager-to-be-acknowledged “religious” or nominally Christian people in the country along with them in this clearly barbaric quest cannot be anything but a sign of decadence….. Continue Reading →