re: #305 SteveMcGaziBolaGate

Did you read it? I just did, and it isn’t really a defense of torture. It is an acknowledgement that torture may be inevitable and how to mitigate it.

It’s not inevitable. It’s always something people make an active choice to do because they have no principles, honor or integrity.

There is no realistic ticking time bomb scenario. It’s a fantasy action adventure trope, predicated on a convoluted set of insanely unrealistic circumstances. In the real world there is no perfect knowledge of the terrorist plot in progress, and no cut scenes cluing the audience in to their guilt so that everyone can cheer and know the good guys are doing the right thing.

Shows like 24 were designed to deaden both the conscience and intelligence of the American public, to move us towards accepting a blatant betrayal of our national heritage. We’d been hit and were feeling raw and vulnerable, and the Bush Administration and their apologists use the resulting fear to justify an official policy based on sheer atavism, in spite of how counter productive and frankly damaging to our national security it actually was.