GraniteGrok

Update:  ugh...talk about spelling and grammatical errors...my apologies....I think I fixed them (H/T: Doug!)

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Putting women's underwear on someone's head is not torture.  Making people stand for long periods of time, while tiring and painful, is not torture.  Subjecting them to lies, mis-directions, and "good cop - bad cop" is not torture.  Lots of cold, lots of heat, while not pleasant, may not be torture.

Beatings will make my list of torture techniques.  So does the chopping off of fingers, limbs and other body parts, gouging of eyes, rape, electric shocks, poisons, medical experimentation, and the like.

This one, however, tops it all.  You want to know what REAL torture is?  You want to know what our REAL enemy does without a flicker of humanity?  Try this on, and then tell me how the so-called torture (think Abu Ghraib)  that the US has been accused of ranks next to this!

From Michael Yon, who puts himself in harm's way by embedding himself directly with our troops (unlike the vast majority of the MSM reports who stay in the Green Zone and rely on suspect stringers to bring them the news):

Since my reporting of the massacre at the al Hamari village, many readers at home have asked how anyone can know that al Qaeda actually performed the massacre. The question is a very good one, and one that I posed from the first hour to Iraqis and Americans while trying to ascertain facts about the killings.

No one can claim with certainty that it was al Qaeda, but the Iraqis here seem convinced of it. At a meeting today in Baqubah one Iraqi official I spoke with framed the al Qaeda infiltration and influence in the province. Although he spoke freely before a group of Iraqi and American commanders, including Staff Major General Abdul Kareem al Robai who commands Iraqi forces in Diyala, and LTC Fred Johnson, the deputy commander of 3-2 Stryker Brigade Combat Team, the Iraqi official asked that I withhold his identity from publication. His opinion, shared by others present, is that al Qaeda came to Baqubah and united many of the otherwise independent criminal gangs.

Speaking through an American interpreter, Lieutenant David Wallach who is a native Arabic speaker, the Iraqi official related how al Qaeda united these gangs who then became absorbed into “al Qaeda.” They recruited boys born during the years 1991, 92 and 93 who were each given weapons, including pistols, a bicycle and a phone (with phone cards paid) and a salary of $100 per month, all courtesy of al Qaeda. These boys were used for kidnapping, torturing and murdering people.

At first, he said, they would only target Shia, but over time the new al Qaeda directed attacks against Sunni, and then anyone who thought differently. The official reported that on a couple of occasions in Baqubah, al Qaeda invited to lunch families they wanted to convert to their way of thinking. In each instance, the family had a boy, he said, who was about 11 years old. As LT David Wallach interpreted the man’s words, I saw Wallach go blank and silent. He stopped interpreting for a moment. I asked Wallach, “What did he say?” Wallach said that at these luncheons, the families were sat down to eat. And then their boy was brought in with his mouth stuffed. The boy had been baked. Al Qaeda served the boy to his family.

Got that?  Imagine what will happen if we pull out from Iraq and Afghanistan!  THIS is true evil, true torture.  Imagine what the boy went through.  Imagine if he was yours.

THIS is the evil we fight.  And no, not just military might will win this long term (think decades, if not longer) war.  We fight not against other nation states as we have in the past but against a totalitarian set of fascists who wish to control every aspect of our lives according to their interpretation of the Koran.  To them, it is simple - submit, convert, or die. 

These innocent boys died to enslave their families.