Memo From the Inside of a Box with a Caterpillar

Since this is my first attempt at witting something that was not created solely for receiving a grade I would ask anyone to bear with me. Or is it bare with me? I'll have to flesh that one out later. Anyway as this is my first attempt at a blogging I figure I'll start with a softball strolling lazily over the plate. Low hanging fruit as it were. An over matched contender to the title flopping to his back in the middle weight title fight. (You know who you are and what you did Thales Leites) What could this give-me topic be? What subject could I apply my vast reservoir of wisdom to and render an almost King Solomon like decision you ask? To which I would have to reply, Torture, of course! Yesterday I finally sat down and read the "torture" memos. All I have to say is really? That’s it? No mock executions? No beatings that required stitches, splints, bandages? No hanging guys by there thumbs from the ceilings? No baseball bats to the bottom of the feet Midnight Express style? Not even a measly little car battery, jumper cable, testicular action? Nope we go the bug in a box route.
Well even there we have several tastily sadistic options bee's, wasps, stinging millipedes. What do we go with a...caterpillar? A f$&*ing woolly bully! Really, this is how the US tortures? We are the best at everything. Who makes the best tanks, planes, steroids, and credit card based indentured servitude system? We do, that’s who.
It would seem we need some torture lessons. Lets get the Russians on the horn to help us figure out how to run secret prisons where people disappear to never to be heard from again. I see Gitmo on the news every night. Last week I saw a two hour special on National Geographic titled "Inside Gitmo". Perhaps we get the Vietnamese on the horn to instruct us on the finer points of breaking bones so that future politicians need a back scratcher with a comb taped on it quaff the comb-over in the morning. (No offense to John McCain he is a better man than I or, for that matter, anyone I know but ask that guy about torture. I'll bet he knows a thing or two about being on the receiving end of what is and is not torture.) Or, since they’re already there, we get the radical fundamentalists to give us the finer points of a good old YouTube advertised beheading. (I think the key is promotion but some say it’s all about the talent. It’s just so hard to get the best scimitar swingers signed to multi-execution deals.) But I digress, as I read it, we suck at torture.
So by now you may be saying to yourself, in more than a little panic, what do we do if this is the best torture we can muster? Perhaps we should all take a moment, take a deep Lamaze style cleansing breath, perform a self cranial-anal-ectomy, (I believe you can get the kit from Rite Aid) and take a look at the world. If the fundamentalists had taken US solders from the battle field would you not hit your knees and pray to whatever deity was listening that the worst thing to happen to them was an attempt to, and I quote, “induce the sensation of drowning”. Not to drownd, not to submerge until unconscious, not until there is a danger of brain damage. To induce the sensation, and more than that we had a legal discussion about what that intended sensation was.
Even more ridicules than this discussion is the discussion of the aforementioned caterpillar in a box. We couldn’t use a stinging insect, we couldn’t leave the esteemed murder of children from Saudi Arabia in the box too long, we had to inform him that the bug would not harm him. Really? We had to soften up a Fear Factor stunt for a terrorist? I can swear I’ve seen this conversation play out with Joe Rogan trying to talk a playboy bunny off the ceiling as he shoved her head in a plexiglass box with and emperor scorpion.
Look I hate torture as much as the next guy. I don’t want to live in a country that indiscriminately gives guys the “rough trade”. But I don’t want to live in a nation that is so afraid of its legal system that when a known terrorist who has information that could save American lives that we cant use a little water up the nose, rag in the mouth, Jack Bauer treatment. If Godzilla has taught us anything it’s when you are fighting a monster you have to build a giant robotic monster to combat it. (See the seminal work on monster combat Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla, 1974) Yes they may destroy the rest of Tokyo in the process of killing each other but you can always rebuild. We are fighting small, bearded, smelly monsters and unfortunately we are going to need our own robotic monsters (read highly trained interrogation personnel) to defeat them. If these guys “rights” get violated a little bit in the heat of battle then so be it. You cash in your rights when you decide to be a soldier. I know I did.
To sum it all up we have two paths here. Either we move forward knowing that sometimes hard times call for hard men to do things we find distasteful. Or we decide that our moral certainty is right and valuable no matter how many American lives it costs. Personally, I can only see this moral certainty leading us down a road where America is no longer heavy weight champ of nations and I refuse to relinquish the strap in lue of a knock out victory. To be the champ you have to beat the champ as they say. Now, If it would make anyone feel better I will climb back in the plywood box I have constructed in my front lawn with Lenny. (I’ve named my pet torture caterpillar)