An(other) epiphany moment: Why the * gang tortured people @ Abu Ghraib

Okay, so I'm a little slow on the uptake here, but as I was reading Sy Hersh's article it occured to me why * and his moffia on steroids would take such risk to torture people who neither never had knowledge about the insuregency in Iraq or Al Qaeda, or had been in custody so long that any operational information that they possessed would be long past operational:


TERRORIZE: To dominate by intimidation, fill with dread


The more the blanks are filled in for me it becomes more difficult to breath.



:argh:





edited for 'neither', not 'either'. :dunce:

The same way any sick little fuck ENJOYS blowing up frogs.

Or shooting cats with BB's.

They get pleasure from it.

...but I really think that it had/has to be more than that to have it come straight from the top, to take those risks. I believe that it was about control and domination, the same reason that two-bit abusers commit sadistic crimes against the person that they are subjugating to their will.

I wouldn't be surprised that there were some of those Iraq jaunts that they've personally participated in torture. Or at least witnessed it up close.

Actually. I'd be surprised if they DIDN'T get close to it.

A glimpse of the big picture is an excruciating experience. What these people stand for is inconsistent with everything good.

...the other night, and Kill Bill Vol. 2 a few nights before.

Michael Madsen was born to play characters who torture people in Tarantino movies. His characters are clearly psychotic and clearly enjoy the torture they inflict upon others. That torture will often serve a larger purpose - torture and kill the cop who saw too much, torture and kill the woman who's a threat to the boss - but the torturer also gets lots of juice from the process.

So you're right, the larger purpose is to dominate by intimidation and fill with dread. However, the torturers and their enablers also get off on it!

I also think in this particular circumstance, there's a whole psycho/sexual component to it as well. They knocked over our huge double phallus on emergency day (911) and we seek revenge. We fear the penis in the ass, we fear the brown man fucking our pure white daughters, we fear the unknown, it's Isaac vs. Ishmael, it's Us vs. Them. So of course we have to have fathers raping their own sons and electrical wire to the testicles. For a society raised on porn and Tarantino, it all makes perfect sense.

History will not be kind to this nation!

(p.s. "They" and "We" ain't You and Me!)

I love when I post what is on my mind an another DUer responds more fully than my OP, saying it so much better than I. This really is a great place. :hi:

The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness : only power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from all the oligarchies of the past, in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just round the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?

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Rove uses "1984" as a "how-to" manual, not as a cautionary tale.

They were utterly desperate to 'find the WMDs' and thought that if they tortured Iraqis someone would 'tell' where they were.

Mostly I think its that Rumsfeld, Cheney and Bush* are psychopathic thugs.

the Romans were masters at it, which is why they held on to the empire for so long.

They'll need loyal soldiers when it comes time to round us up.

I'm half-serious. "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities," and it works the other way, too. Maintain a force of torturers, and they will help you squeeze every last advantage out of your insane policies.