This 'n that; lotsa torture

Just a few notes and a general thank-you:

UPI has received, to date, over 9500 visitors and nearly 13,500 page views. To my constant readers and those who drop by sporadically for a dose of alienated craziness, I thank you. The only other time I was ever accorded the undivided attention of over a thousand people was in the 1970s, when my old rock band The Nobz opened for The Tubes at Atlanta’s Fox Theater. The Internet is a colder venue, but if time and circumstances have made me a bit more articulate than singing back-up on such gems as “Lawnmowers in Love”, “Pet Rock” and “Disco Chainsaw”, it’s nice to have a forum for my cognitively-dissonant ramblings. I long for the days when I still had my sense of humor, but the world has turned into such a grim, nihilistic place that any humor I find in current events or social trends is so dark that I dare not express it lest I be sent to a re-education camp for the politically incorrect.

Apparently, people occasionally search my archives here at Blogger™, and check out yesterday’s news. The dreaded “Anonymous” left a comment on last year’s “The nigger lover”, saying my writing was so terrible and bad, it’s “terribad”. Okay. I published it, since there wasn’t any outright profanity involved. I would’ve appreciated suggestions for how to improve my style, but none were forthcoming. Please don't write in telling me how good I am; sycophancy does not become what I do here.

I waver between stream-of-consciousness writing and lessons learned from Strunk & White’s The Elements of Style and United Press International’s Newswire Stylebook. Those used to be the Bibles of journalism, before subjective ideology superseded straight reporting as the standard for the historical record. Back in the day—as a freelancer—I filed a few stories that were picked up by the other UPI. I never forgot what my journalism teacher—a crusty old fart named Phillip S. who was a reporter with a press card in his hatband and a pencil and small spiral notepad in hand—told me about the nature of the job: “You aren’t there to be the story; you’re there to record what is happening.” Phil taught me how to edit copy, work an offset press, and write a story that tells the truth without editorializing or spinning the facts. In a perfect world, he’d be the managing editor at the New York Times today.

Another Occasional Reader left a comment at the previous post: “I like seeing an individual who isn't conflicted about what constitutes torture.”

There is a lot of buzz about what constitutes “torture” these days. As an aficionado of sleaze, I am aware that people will pay big bucks per hour for certain kinds of “torture”. Just as appeasers are fond of saying “one person’s ‘terrorist’ is another’s ‘freedom fighter’,” I am fond of remarking that “one person’s ‘torture victim’ is another’s ‘client’.”

Today’s terrorists are so lucky! They get paraded around in women’s underwear; Hell, that’s worth $300 an hour to clients of certain mistresses. They get a little water up the nostrils; it stings, but I underwent that as a pup learning to swim.

Let’s try some techniques from Vietnam outlawed by the Church Commission when Mr. Peanut became the dress rehearsal for The Manchurian Candidate:

Technique #1 was something referred to as “The Bell Telephone Hour”. The old-fashioned field telephones used in Nam required an internal generator-capacitor system to send a ring tone down the wire. (You’ve seen this in countless war movies; the beleaguered commander spins the crank, and HQ responds at the other end.) It doesn’t take a lot of imagination or expertise to run a couple of lead wires off the generator, and tape them to the genitals of “a person of interest”. The amperage is high; it’s the amperage that kills you, not the low-amp 50,000 volts of a police taser.

A quarter turn of the generator crank is enough for screams and body spasms; use your imagination for further turns of the screw.

More sophisticated interrogators made use of high-pressure air hoses; the same devices you use to inflate your tires to 32 psi at the gas station. Compressors are small, and can be powered by a standard car battery. With a thumb-release nozzle, similar to an airbrush, and applied to the nasal and ear cavities, these things could produce immediate results.

Technique #3 was something I’d like to apply to Osama Bin-Laden over Ground Zero in New York: “Flying lessons.”

The ters who caused 9/11 are infamous for taking flying lessons in America. I have some make-up lessons for them. Again, this was a tried-and-true method in Nam until CBS caught a session on tape and blew the whistle.

Pick three enemy combatants who all know approximately the same information. Take them up in a helicopter to 1100+ feet, and hover.

Don’t ask the first contestant a single question. Toss him out to show the other two players you are serious.

Ask the second individual what you need to know. Standard responses are fear of the third player, that they will rat him for telling, or in the case of jihadists, defiance.

Two chances at an answer are standard. Any further resistance…don’t let the door hit you on your way out.

The third contestant invariably answers questions.

If we’re into being kinder and gentler, he gets flown back to base and given special consideration as a Pavlovian reward. Back in the day, he got to see if he could fly; just so no awkward questions arose later. Bin-Laden should be televised nationally over the WTC crater learning to fly.

I have few compunctions about dealing with evil. There are numerous incidents from post-Civil-War Reconstruction to the Indian Wars to War II that are stains upon our perceived American honor. Dunking terrorists in a swimming pool and giving them wedgies pales in comparison to the looting, burning and massacre at Darien, Georgia, to Wounded Knee and Powder River, to the out-of-hand summary executions of Nazis alongside the roadways to victory in War II.

If my writing is “terribad”, it may be because I’m the master of the run-on sentence.

A poll taken last year indicated that a large percentage of pet owners would throw their beloved critters into the ocean for $1,000,000. I’d sooner take a manslaughter rap than have you muscle up on my dogs; I think a lot more of my pets than I do of some scumbag whose avowed purpose in life is to slaughter Americans. If a terrorist has knowledge of an impending incident that will take the life of your child, would you be as repelled by the interrogation techniques I have just described? I think not.

Think about that when you see The Manchurian Candidate bowing to dictators, apologizing for the American existential spirit, and assuming a posture of weakness and submission while trying to subvert America into a European ideal of collective surrender.

I used to be disgusted; now I’m just amused.