TORTURE? REALLY?

Like many national debates fueled by our wonderful media the entire premise is wrong. America always starts with a worthy and perfectly valid idea. Then time and the endless efforts of "progressives" contort that idea to imbecility. Consider the idea that "cruel and unusual" punishment should not be allowed. Sounds great but look how that idea has been manipulated over the years. One method after another of inflicting the death penalty has been eliminated. Newer and more humane methods were invented only to later be deemed cruel and unusual. We are currently at the point where death penalty opponents argue that lethal injection is cruel because we cannot be sure the recipient does not feel some pain or discomfort. They no longer bother to argue the "unusual" part since executions are so rare they feel unusual no longer applies. Also, this obscures the meaning of the phrase. You see, we never meant to outlaw punishment that was cruel, just punishment that was unusually cruel.

Now, thanks to the media and our new President we are calling mildly rough interrogation methods torture. I assure you I have both received and have doled out worst punishment simply by growing up with four siblings. Imagine the horror of being told that a caterpillar would be placed in your cell. The offending bug was never introduced, just threatened. Imagine the impact being lightly smacked on the cheek, or grabbed by your lapels or pressed suddenly up against a wall could have on your self esteem. If you've lead a normal life you shouldn't have to imagine these things you can just remember what it was like when you encountered a school yard bully in elementary school, and that kid actually had a bug in most cases.

Waterboarding is deemed torture by President Obama but splashing water on the face of a terrorists is not my idea of torture. To me torture would have to be something more serious like being forced to decide between burning to death or jumping from an eighty or ninety story window. I would consider if torture if a man bit my lip and held that lip painfully between his teeth while he raped me or if he left me trapped in submerged car to die. There is a limit to the amount of empathy I can offer people who are willing to bomb a pizza parlor filled with women and children, fly a plane full of innocent folks into a building or hack off the head of a young man for his great sin of being born an American and a Jew.

Torture? Really Mr. President.