torture …

They are torturing people. They are torturing people on Guantanamo Bay. They are engaging in acts which amount to torture in the medieval sense of the phrase. They are engaging in good old-fashioned torture, as people would have understood it in the Dark Ages.
~ Richard Bourke, Australian attorney
[torture] presupposes, it requires, it craves the abrogation of our capacity to imagine others’ suffering, dehumanizing them so much that their pain is not our pain. It demands this of the torturer, placing the victim outside and beyond any form of compassion or empathy, but also demands of everyone else the same distancing, the same numbness.
~ Ariel Dorfman [from his book "Torture: A Collection"]

Modern man likes to pretend that his thinking is wide-awake. But this wide-awake thinking has led us into the mazes of a nightmare in which the torture chambers are endlessly repeated in the mirrors of reason.
~ Octavio Paz quotes

The civilized have created the wretched, quite coldly and deliberately, and do not intend to change the status quo; are responsible for their slaughter and enslavement; rain down bombs on defenseless children whenever and wherever they decide that their ‘vital interests’ are menaced, and think nothing of torturing a man to death: these people are not to be taken seriously when they speak of the ’sanctity’ of human life, or the ‘conscience’ of the civilized world.
~ James Baldwin [From chapter one of "The Devil Finds Work" (orig. pub. 1976), page 489 of Collected Essays

What the world needs is not dogma but an attitude of scientific inquiry combined with a belief that the torture of millions is not desirable, whether inflicted by Stalin or by a Deity imagined in the likeness of the believer.
~ Bertrand Russell

The healthy man does not torture others."
~ Carl Gustav Jung

We don't torture people in America and people who say we do simply know nothing about our country.
~ George W. Bush [Interview with Australian TV - October 18, 2003]

Those who torture, or allow or recommend it, make the greatest liars.
~ Sebastian L. Muccilli, Embarrassed U.S. Citizen

These things I believe: That government should butt out. That freedom is our most precious commodity and if we are not eternally vigilant government will take it all away. That individual freedom demands individual responsibility. That government is not a necessary good but an unavoidable evil. That the executive branch has grown too strong, the judicial branch too arrogant and the legislative branch too stupid. That political parties have become close to meaningless. That government should work to insure the rights of the individual, not plot to take them away. That government should provide for the national defense and work to insure domestic tranquillity. That foreign trade should be fair rather than free. That once a year we should hang someone in government as an example to his fellows.

~Lyn Nofziger

Five related pieces

U.N. Official: U.S. Waterboarding is ‘Unjustifiable’

Philadelphia Inquirer

The United Nations’ torture investigator criticized the White House yesterday for defending the use of waterboarding and urged the United States to give up its defense of “unjustifiable” interrogation methods. The comments from Manfred Nowak, the United Nations’ special rapporteur on torture, came a day after the Bush administration acknowledged publicly for the first time that waterboarding was used by U.S. government questioners on three terror suspects. Testifying before Congress, CIA Director Michael Hayden said the suspects were waterboarded in 2002 and 2003. “This is absolutely unacceptable under international human-rights law,” Nowak said. “Time has come that the government will actually acknowledge that they did something wrong and not continue trying to justify what is unjustifiable.”

Waterboarding is Legal, White House Says

Los Angeles Times

The White House said Wednesday that the widely condemned interrogation technique known as waterboarding is legal and that President Bush could authorize the CIA to resume using the simulated-drowning method under extraordinary circumstances. The surprise assertion from the Bush administration reopened a debate that many in Washington had considered closed. Two laws passed by Congress in recent years — as well as a Supreme Court ruling on the treatment of detainees — were widely interpreted to have banned the CIA’s use of the extreme interrogation method.

Ash Wednesday Observed With Antiwar Protest At White House

The New London Day

Members of Washington-area Catholic groups began the Lenten season Wednesday by smearing ashes over walkways in front of the White House as a symbol of what they called repentance for the country’s involvement in the war in Iraq and the torture of Guantanamo detainees. Though the group read prayers and sang hymns over a megaphone in front of the White House gates, event organizer James Salt said the event was meant to be a symbolic gesture rather than a loud rally. “Our only hope is that you are a forgiving God and this sign of repentance will stay your hand over an evil empire,” the Rev. Joseph Nangle said as he led the ashes ceremony.

Next Year’s War Costs Estimated at $170 Billion or More

New York Times

The military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan could cost $170 billion in the next fiscal year over and above the $515.4 billion regular Pentagon budget that President Bush has proposed, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said on Wednesday. Mr. Gates gave that estimate in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee after cautioning the panel that any estimate would be dicey, given the unpredictability of war.

The CIA’s Criminal Admission

Boston Globe

The Central Intelligence Agency and the Pentagon have both banned the use of waterboarding in interrogations, but a spokesman for President Bush said yesterday that Bush could still authorize its use in the future. Congress, which already passed a broadly worded ban on torture in 2006, has no choice but to specifically prohibit this technique. The Spanish Inquisition, Nazi Germany, militarist Japan, Pol Pot – this is the roster that Bush wants the United States to join. Congress should act to make sure that the United States does not once again stoop to using tortura del agua (water torture). That’s what it was called during the Inquisition.