_THIS_

I was never a fan of Bush II and his malicious sidekick Cheney, and even less so of their misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq.  Yesterday's revelations of CIA Torture are crimes.  These people abused prisoners in ways that all Western powers should be horrified by, and they knew damn good and well what they were doing.

When we first starting hearing rumours of an "extraordinary rendition" program, and the wrongdoings at Abu Ghraib, I figured that there was something much, much worse going on.  Sure enough, that's what was happening.

Round up the lot of these rotten bastards and hang them out to dry.  Ship them off to the World Court in The Hague and lock in a cell while prosecutors put together a case against them.  These are crimes the magnitude of which cannot be ignored.

Canadians need to remind Stephen Harper that torture is wrong.  Not only will it produce exactly zero useful information, it is morally and ethically wrong.  For Canada to even implicitly endorse the use of torture by accepting "information gathered" through those means goes against the values of Canada as a whole.  We are better than that.

It is a shame that Harper isn't.

Last Week's Lies Are Inoperative

Remember Harper & Co. swearing up and down that there was absolutely no evidence to support allegations of prisoner abuse?

Not so much.

So ... I wonder what this week's lie will be to cover up last week's that has been disproven?

If Colvin's Testimony is so "unbelievable" ...

Then we should be asking some really tough questions of Defense Minister Mackay in light of his top General's recent comments.

"We indeed did stop the transfer more than one time," he said. "At the same time, I don't want to throw out more information. There's a process that's undergoing and I know that the witnesses will be called forward for that process and give their testimony."

So ... Mr. Mackay, would you care to square last week's knee-jerk attempt to dismiss Mr. Colvin's testimony with the actions of the very department you are the minister for? Clearly the Canadian Armed Forces believed that something wasn't entirely right in the first place, so that tells me that Mr. Colvin's concerns had their share of validity - even in the absence of "absolute proof".

Just one more example of the Harper gov't lying to Canadians for political gain.

The Ends Do NOT Justify The Means

Apparently Sun Media columnist Rachel Marsden thinks that where torture is concerned, waterboarding as an interrogation technique does.

Waterboarding, for those less than familiar with the vileness that is the torturer's mindset, is a technique where you basically convince the victim to talk by almost, but not quite, drowning them. I won't go into the grisly details of this technique - it is every bit as damaging as the various tortures used in the Middle Ages.

According to Ms. Marsden, waterboarding is no worse than the techniques used by competitive swimming coaches:

I suppose that those who object to terror suspects getting water up the nose would say that, as a young competitive swimmer, I was also tortured. It was called "hypoxic training" -- swimming underwater and holding our breath until we passed out. Our coaches didn't call it torture, just an exercise in "mental toughness." So think of it this way -- terror suspects are getting some free mental toughness training courtesy of the U.S. government.

No Rachel, you dumb twit - there's a damn big difference between what a young swimmer contends with and being strapped down to a board and having ABSOLUTELY NO CONTROL over what is being DONE TO YOU!

Intelligence saves lives.

Why yes it does. But just how reliable do you think intelligence gathered by physical coercion is, Rachel? Someone being tortured will say whatever they think their captors want to hear - whether it has any grounding in reality is irrelevant.

Now consider the case of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the 9/11 mastermind who ultimately claimed to have been involved in dozens of terrorist plots. He was found dressed like a slob, naturally, and also apparently in possession of a letter from Osama bin Laden. Think he might have known a thing or two?

I'm not sure how folks who are critical of the CIA's interrogation techniques would suggest eliciting intelligence from guys like this. Perhaps by offering him some tasty snacks and the love and understanding that he lacked as a child?

And why do you think torture is going to get you anything useful? If you get something "useful", you still have to corroborate it through other more reliable sources - so why aren't you using those reliable sources properly in the first place?

The examples of spies like Aldrich Ames in fact underscores my point. Ames was not coerced to provide information to the Soviet Union through force - he was recruited and paid. The information he provided to the Soviets was undoubtedly of a high grade and useful.

Marsden might think that torture is justified because someone is a suspect in a terrorism investigation. Then again, we only have to look at the case of Maher Arar as an example of just how effective torture actually is in extracting information. Or perhaps, she'd like a little sample of CIA-sponsored "swimming lessons" as she so dismissively puts it?

No, Rachel, the ends do not justify the means. Just as the evil that is perpetrated by terrorists is impossible to square with the political goals behind it, descending into acts of evil ourselves is not justified either. Desperate times may beget desperate measures, but you better be goddamn sure it's that desperate before you sink to depths of torturing someone to find out what you think they know.