Tuesday, July 10, 2007

Brits -- The U.S. is Stupid

Odd that almost no member of the U.S. Congress has been able to utter anything approaching the following short letter in July 10 Boston Globe:
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AS A BRIT, I take strong exception to Cheryl Mavrikos's July 5 letter "Terror in the UK," in which she writes that "had the three nail-laden vehicles exploded, the British would be using whatever means necessary to bring the perpetrators to justice, including torture." I highly doubt it.

The British commitment to civil rights extends back three times the age of the United States, and includes the first recorded use of habeas corpus, which America recently decided was dispensable.

If 10 years of Irish Republican Army bombings did not prompt Britain to descend into officially sanctioned barbarity, it is rather unlikely that one exploding nail-laden truck would change the national character.

Torture is immoral and ineffective, and history never looks kindly upon those who practice it. I suspect that Mavrikos's enthusiasm for torture would be considerably muted were she to find herself on the receiving end.

ANDREW SEWELL
Somerville
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What impulse has driven so many Americans to literally crave the idea of torturing human beings ? Why do they lash out so viciously at anyone who is "anti-torture"? Where do they come from ?

I can tell you. They've always been here. It's just that until GWBumwipe, societal norms have been sufficiently elevated to make it extremely unpopular for folks to openly advocate and cheer for human torture. Now the floodgate has been opened. Apparently, lots of New Englanders and Americans love torture. They truly love it. It gives them a hard on. It makes their vaginal juices flow like the Glen Canyon Dam when Las Vegas turns on its air conditioners.

It's all good.

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