Torturing Terrorists-It’s Not That Hard

There’s a lot of big things happening right now-LOTS, and it’s hard to get a grasp for even seasoned newshounds to keep track of exactly where we are and where we’re going. However, the story that dominates of late-the story w the most legs is the torture allegations. To that end, I think the best piece I’ve read on it is this one, and I hope everyone reads it…especially as just yesterday some people forgot, and now we’ve got fresh images of a NYC in panic as a low-flying jetliner is chased by Air Force fighters over the skies of Manhattan.

Make Terrorists Choose Between Jumping or Burning: Now That Would Be Torture

So now the president is considering show trials of Bush Administration officials who issued opinions on permissibility of “harsh” interrogation techniques on Al Qaeda terrorists.

Once again, folks, this is not hard.

Let’s flash back to the sunny September day when hell was unleashed on our nation. Many horrors could be recalled from 9/11, but I’d like to bring to remembrance just one: The roughly 200 innocent souls, by one estimate, forced into the inconceivable choice to hurl themselves from the towers to escape the searing heat and smothering smoke from flaming jet fuel.

Author Michael Daly recounted the scene: “Some jumped together, holding hands. Most leapt singly, often tumbling as they fell . . . most were on their backs as they reached the lower floors, facing the heavens if not necessarily heaven. Their last sight was of the perfect baby-blue sky as they struck the pavement with a velocity that instantly turned a living person into a bright red splatter. The sound was jarring, loud, a body becoming a bomb.”

You say Khalid Sheik Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times? Cry me a river.

How about if we had tossed this cold-hearted butcher into a room on a platform some 1,300 feet up, fired it up to a toasty 2000oF, pumped in the acrid smoke of combusting fuel, and given KSM a better choice than his blameless victims got: Talk, jump or feel your flesh sizzle off?

Now that might have been torture.