I have to get this off my chest: I don’t give a fat rat’s ass how many times Abu Boo-hoo or Khalid Shit Moo-moo got water boarded, had sleep deprivation, or were forced to watch re-runs of Gilligan’s Island.Â Left to me, I could see putting hot reeds under their fingernails.Â Sewing scotch bonnet peppers into their buttocks.Â Sanding their foreheads and tying a headband soaked in salt water around their heads.Â You know, nasty stuff.

But that’s why I never ran for President, among other reasons, of course.Â And it’s why vigilantism is a great idea in the anger of one’s private thoughts but a lousy one when actually practiced.Â There are just certain things you don’t do, not even to an ant.

Ganz abgesehen davon (Aside from the fact — I don’t know why I had to suddenly put that in German; let me start this from the beginning.) Aside from the fact that torture is nasty and childish, it’s pretty clear that truly crappy techniques don’t work.Â The He-who-is-not-to-be-named Administration’s justification for torture is that “it produces results.”Â Bullshit it does.Â I suppose that’s the lesson they learned from the Korean War (where waterboarding was first introduced to an eager world) — so that when American soldiers, so fearful of drowning, admitted on North Korean television (all two of them) and on radio (lots of those) that Golly, they’d been so badly mistaken, that North Korean Communism really was the dandiest thing on the planet.

Me, I’m a poor choice as torturee.Â Threaten me with anything more than having to eat liver, I’ll tell you anything you want to hear.Â Who gives a crap if I tell the truth or lie if it will save me from gagging on liver?

Blech.