When asked by a journalistic talking head if saddam would be tortured, rummy responded questions like that seem so, well, unfair. "We don't torture people."
Rummy was followed later by a military guy who said they would certainly deprive him [Saddam] of sleep--"he won't have any sleep cycle at all."
which we all know isn't torture.
and that's the least of it. i guess a guy has to be healthy to be tortured. or perhaps the believe he's keeping WMD down his throat.
R
----- Original Message -----
From: Wojtek Sokolowski
Sent: Tuesday, December 16, 2003 6:40 AM
Subject: [lbo-talk] lynching [was: Saddam captured]
> >Brian Siano opined:
> >
> >
> >>Looks to me as though Saddam's getting medical attention, to make
sure
> >>he's healthy enough for incarceration and trial.
> >>
> >>
> >
> >Why bother with such formalities? You, your "commander in chief,"
the
> >majority of your countrymen, and above all the media have already
> >pronounced him guilty.
> >
> >
> And with good reason. You may wish to acknowledge this.
>
> But, if you want to be pedantic enough to insist that only a trial can
> establish his guilt, you'd have to give Hitler and Stalin the benefit
of
> the doubt as well.
If I wanted to be pedantic enough I would point out that Mr. Hussein is
being virtually lynched by the US lynching mob - an activity that is an
integral part of the US history and mentality. The difference between
lynching and justice is that in the former the deeds of the person
subjected to public humiliation or punishment are rationalizations
rather than for that humiliation. That is to say, a person joins a
lynching mob (or a pogrom, for that matter) because it gives him an
opportunity to assail a token scapegoat - usually a member of an
unpopular minority, such as Negro, a Jew, a homosexual, or simply an
outsider.
Lynching is a process whereby the participants focus their fear and
hatred on an effigy and destroy that effigy to relieve themselves of
their own fears and frustrations - but then they rationalize their own
despicable actions in terms of meting out "justice" by pointing out to
the real or perceived evil deeds that the victim had committed.
However, an important element of this process is that these purported
deed by themselves would never trigger "meting out of justice" (as in
case of court trial). In other words, the deeds of that sort are
committed all the time and the participants of a lynching mob either
know but do nothing about them, or do not care to pay any attention to
those deeds. They go to action only when they receive a signal from
some sort of authority figure (a government official, religious leader,
the media, or even a self-styled agitator) that it sis the "open season"
for hunting down certain types of bad guys.
The treatment Mr. Hussein received from the American people has all the
signs of lynching. These concerned US citizens did not give a shit when
Mr. Hussein was gassing people for the US and NATO (Kurds were a threat
to Turkey, which was crucial member of NATO containment of x-USSR) nor
did they give a shit about Pinochet, Noriega, Sukharto and assorted
butchers on their payroll. These stalwarts of individualism and
independence from the government started being concerned about a
"threat" posed by Mr. Saddam only after the government cued them to do
so. Just like in the 'good old days' when somebody cued them to string
up a Negro.
This is, btw, what I hate the most about the US and its people. You can
find the lynching mob mentality in virtually any country, but only the
US-ers think that they attained a level of civilization never achieved
by any other human society. It is that contradiction between the
hideous US reality and lofty standards by which the US-ers want to be
judged that makes the US look particularly despicable to the outsiders,
and makes people dancing in the streets when something bad happens to
it.
Wojtek
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