Thoughts on torture

Well I was browsing through Rempelia Prime and saw his link to a blog called bound by gravity and before getting to the point of Peter's link, I found that I have already come to hate the author at bound by gravity. Why, you say? Because he is a douche bag who plays with the word torture. Ok let's begin analyzation of torture. Here is Andrew's moral equivalence take on it:

I don't particularly care if you think that humiliation, intimidation, and sexual assault are valid means of extracting information, the fact remains that they are all forms of torture, and all are equally vile and reprehensible. Trying to justify this sort of thing by pointing to even worse atrocities committed by the enemy is pointless distraction, and is not going to work.

Bold was put in by me to highlight contradictions, how do those two notions jive? Are they worse or are they equal? I am confused. I think he wants to say equal to be a progressive douche bag, but he also wants to say worse because that's the reality of it. Here is an excerpt of Hussein's torture(from the same website that Andrew references a definition of torture) that Andrew says pointing to it would be "pointless distraction".

"One day I was taken to a separate room out of my cell. The guards raised my legs and bared my feet and started beating me with a long stick with a rounded end in which nails were inserted. It's known in Iraq as the 'migwar'.""It was extremely painful. My feet started bleeding heavily. After a while the migwar broke against my feet. One of the nails struck me on my fourth toe. The guards brought some car oil and smeared it on my toe, and then they covered and tied my toe with a piece of cloth. Then they brought a new migwar and continued beating me".

"Two days later I was moved to another room. The guards repeated the beating for a while, I don't know how long, because you lose your sense of time under torture. The beating was so severe that the flesh on my right leg broke and the white of my bone was exposed. I had to be hospitalised for recovery".The marks of this physical abuse are still visible on Mohammed Al-Arabiya's legs, even after 30 years. "But the worst thing is that my torturers still walk the streets freely and one of them lives happily as a carpenter. I want these men and the hundreds like them who tortured the people of Iraq brought to justice", he concludes.

Well, I think it is quite important that we can recognize degrees of severity, wouldn't you Andrew? I mean I thought it was only us right-wingers in the states that think in black and white, not someone who is as "progressive" of a conservative as you.
I like when conservatives like Andrew Sullivan and this Andrew bleat on about torture, giving no frame of reference and equating making someone bark like a dog to driving nails through their feet. I think that differentiating between these actions would be "pointless" and stupid.
You don't hear them post everyday about people who wear civilian clothes and confuse themselves with civilians(so innocents get killed), and take the battlefield to civilian's homes(so innocent's get killed), and cut people's heads off, and cut their friend's heads off while they watch, or force confessions and pleas on videotape. I think putting a bra on someone's head damages someone equally as watching their friend's head get sawed off with a knife.
I think these people take it for granted that our record of civility is so much better than our enemies, and this incessant harping is only meant to take some sort of moral high ground in the pursuit of human rights perfection. If you always err on the side of "not hurting anyone" you can never lose this high ground. It is progressive thought at it's peak. They always err on the side of compassion, not matter how ridiculous it is. Any sort of negative action is looked bad upon and frankly it is ruining society. It is the same thing as not punishing kids- progressive retards always err on the side of not inflicting any sort of emotional damage on their children (punishment- same with progressives and criminals) and so the children actually become unhappy and unadjusted so that parents feel good about themselves. This is what progressive garbage is all about, this moral high ground. People would rather feel better about themselves than to face reality and suck it up and do what's right for christ sake.
Look, any US soldier who doesn't abide by US law of prisoner treatment should be prosecuted and they were in the Abu Ghraib case. That doesn't mean we have to put the US in the same category as Hussein or the Nazi's or even use the word "torture" in the same sense.
I want to know what happens if the prisoner refuses to bark like a dog. What if sat there in silence? What is forcing him to do such a thing? If they beat him for not doing it, that, my friends, is torture. Trying to break someone from the vile hatred and wickedness that they were taught should not be torture. Anything where only words are used is not torture, and anything where the prisoner complies isn't torture. Don't want to bark like a dog, don't do it then. How can you force someone to do it?

One more thing about torture. If putting a bra on someone's head or making them bark like a dog or calling a deep muslim man a homosexual is "severe mental torture", then you would have to say that war is severe mental torture. Simply drafting people to be in the bloody mess that is war, is torture because it has been documented much much more that war harms people more psychologically than any of this shit could do. So I say that anyone who has an army is a nation that supports torture. They obviously are willing to use that army for war, and war is worse mental anguish than putting a bra on someone's head, so they are willing to torture their own soldiers and citizens. Let's not get started about the draft which is torture torture torture.
The other day I told my 6 year old brother I was going to play with his toys when he went to bed. I should have been sentenced to jail for mental anguish. I should also be sentenced for flipping some asshole off on the road the other day, picking up my cat and forcing his paw on the window to make my mom laugh outside, teasing anyone and everyone, and all other things that cause even the slightest emotional discomfort. I think it is an appropriate use of the word and comparing my actions to any others would be complete "pointless".