Torture is Wrong. Effectiveness is Irrelevant. The GOP is Dead to Me.

There have been multiple claims as of late that torture works, mostly as an attempt to counter the argument that torture is wrong and also ineffective. Leaving aside the fact that torture really doesn't work (any true information would be drowned in the sea of wrong information, with no way to confirm which is true and which isn't), any claim that torture works is beside the point and in no way addresses the first part of the formulation: That torture is wrong.

It takes a simple illustration to show this is true. If you have captured a man and threaten to murder his oldest son unless he talks, then to show you are serious, you murder his youngest son in front of his eyes, well, maybe that would be effective at getting him to "talk." But really, whether it works or not doesn't change the fact that you are a murdering psychopath who kills children. By the same token, torture is evil and whether it works or not doesn't change the fact that, if you use it, you are an evil psychopath who needs to be put down (locked up forever).

The Bush/Cheney regime used torture after the conventional, and very effective, interrogation techniques had gotten all the useful intelligence there was to get. But that wasn't enough - not because the captives knew anything, but because they hadn't linked 9/11 to Iraq or hadn't linked WMD's to Iraq, so then torture was used to get those "confessions." And gee, the torture was quite "effective" in getting the prisoners to say exactly what they wanted them to say. And this became part of the "intelligence" used to justify the Iraq war.

That is just sick. I'm sorry, after seeing the right-wing GOP pundits and the asshats on Fox (save Shepard Smith) come on day after day defending TORTURE and the MSM plays along; seeing them act as apologists for TORTURE, which is clearly against the law; seeing them call any attempt to even think about prosecuting these evildoers as somehow "partisan politics" - I just have to throw up in my mouth. The GOP is dead to me. Forever. I used to leave open the possibility that maybe there was someone in that party worth reasoning with, but after seeing this, anyone who doesn't immediately repudiate the GOP as a bunch of torturing fucks is to me, just another torture apologist. This does not make the Democrats much more than spineless wimps who refused to stand up for what is right and stopping this, but at least they aren't the torutre party.

In any case, for the display the GOP has put on today, I will NEVER vote GOP EVER for as long as I live. Not unless the party sincerely apologizes for this and calls for prosecutions of those responsible. Of course, I know this will never happen.