Tortured Logic

While it is open to debate whether "enhanced interrogation" is torture, the intel gained has clearly saved American lives. By excluding these techniques being used by U.S. personnel, we return to the days of rendering high value detainees to countries like Turkey or Egypt where real torture is legal, and observing while the detainees are questioned by brutal inquisitors. This results in actual torture, as opposed to psychological trauma, and wastes precious time when innocent lives are in grave danger. Shockingly, the Administration uses hyperbole in condemning these "enhanced interrogation" techniques on two or three subjects, while ignoring the very real, and unhuman torture that is inflicted on the elderly in U.S. nursing homes every day. Just one month before the 9/11 attacks, CBS news reported that over 9,000 instances of abuse had been reported from 1999 to 2001 in nursing homes. These included beating, kicking, withholding water, and numerous other crimes that would violate the conscience of even the most hardened interrogator. For my money, I hope that when my comes to go to a home, I hope to be treated with the same care and respect that our detainees recieve at the Guantanamo Bay facility, rather than the way some 1600 of our nursing homes care for the elderly.