The true purpose of torture

'Obviously, intelligence agents have an incentive to hide the use of unlawful methods," says Jameel Jaffer of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). "On the other hand, when they use rendition and torture as a threat, it's undeniable that they benefit, in some sense, from the fact that people know that intelligence agents are willing to act unlawfully. They benefit from the fact that people understand the threat and believe it to be credible."

"And the threats have been received. In an affidavit filed with an ACLU court challenge to section 215 of the Patriot Act, Nazih Hassan, president of the Muslim Community Association of Ann Arbor in Michigan, describes this new climate. Membership and attendance are down, donations are way down, board members have resigned - Hassan says his members avoid doing anything that could get their names on lists. One member testified anonymously that he has "stopped speaking out on political and social issues" because he doesn't want to draw attention to himself."

"This is torture's true purpose: to terrorise - not only the people in Guantánamo's cages and Syria's isolation cells but also, and more importantly, the broader community that hears about these abuses. Torture is a machine designed to break the will to resist - the individual prisoner's will and the collective will."

This isn't a new article, in fact it's almost a year old. I'm throwing it out there simply because the word "torture" has died down in the media and the Congress. It's been a little while since those last photos and videos were released, so I guess I'm just kicking up a little dust, just as a reminder that all the torturing and abuse is still going on, and countless people are still being "renditioned".

This article simply states the obvious. The "obvious" being that absolutely everyone in U.S. should already know through our own history, that torture, as a means of getting the truth (or at least a confession) from a suspect, just doesn't work. We've outlawed it here precisly because it was proven to be almost completely unreliable. The article doesn't really make a point of that fact, but rather steps over it, to get to the point that tortures' real purpose is to terrorize and intimidate the general population.

If you've listened to the justifications for it's use, by our leaders, you may have heard a few examples that claimed the information derived from torture actually prevented a few terrorist acts. I suppose if you torture thousands, you'd inevitably trip over something usefull, but the people who've made those claims, are themselves, habitual liars. As far as we know, no useful information has been gathered to prevent anything. There's no way to know for sure, because all the people saying it, have lied to us before, many times.

But still, let's give them the benefit of the doubt and say that they indeed have arm-twisted a few usefull tidbits from the countless thousands who've been rounded up in sweeps, or kidnapped and shipped to someone elses' dungeon. Does of few, literally a few, successes justify torturing thousands and thousands of people whose guilt was never established in the first place?

We hear those faux "patriots" (average citizens and Bush apologists) foaming at the mouth with fiendish delight, at the thought of punishing those terrorists for what they did to us on 9/11. The trouble is that we've already exacted retribution for 9/11. We lost three thousand people that day, and since then, we in turn, have killed many thousands more, at the rising cost of well over two thousand of our service personel. We've maimed and tortured many more thousands. At what point will our blood-thurst be satisfied? Our leaders have their own agenda, but I'm asking about the average person who blindly believes in the excuses given for torturing thousands of innocent people, along with all the not-so-innocent, who are too low-level to know anything useful. When will you finally say "enough is enough'. Why waste time on little people? Because they help spread the fear, the true purpose of torture.

This article is a reminder that in this modern world, we should know better than to accept anyones' arguement that torture is necessary for finding out information. It's sole purpose is intimidating everyone who knows about it. It also makes hypocrites out of any of us who condone it, just because it's us who's doing it this time.

I'd like to point out to anyone who thinks we're justified in indiscriminate torture and abuse. It may be directed at someone else today, but because you allow it to continue, it will be directed at someone else tomorrow, then someone else the day after, and so on, until they finally get to you. By then, it will be so overtly institutionalized that no one will say a word as you're being dragged away, never to be heard from again. Not a prediction, nor a threat, just a historically inevitable reality, if this course doesn't change. It's all up to you; SPEAK UP....or...be silent....