Be Excellent to Each Other

I haven't talked about torture here for a while. I suppose that's good; I don't like to dwell on torture, and it's a subject that I would prefer not to have come up very often. Indeed, the frequency with which the subject comes up these days is itself almost as disturbing as the torture itself.

Anyway, the thing that brought me to the subject today was reading this post by Scott Lemieux on Lawyers, Guns and Money (LGM). Although I don't think what's currently being done to Jose Padilla constitutes torture, per se, it is inexcusable, or as Lemieux puts it:

This kind of systematic mistreatment of prisoners is an utter disgrace on every level: moral, political, legal, and pragmatic.

I hate to think that my government, my countrymen, tortures anyone for any reason, but at least in the case of active warfare or imminent threats, I can understand how one might arrive at some kind of rationalization. But when one has incarcerated and incapacitated someone for literally years, the ongoing abuse loses any rationality.

It's sick, it's wrong, and it's pointless. So stop it. We need to get remove from power the people who seem to think it is a good or useful practice.