I'm very pleased today. I've always dreamed of going to work for my government and torturing people. Waterboarding. Sleep deprivation. Food deprivation. Making human beings wallow in filth. Forced nudity. Mocking their religions. Whatever. I have a special dream of taking people who have a neurotic fear of insects and locking them in little boxes full of bugs.
Yeah, I know torture almost never yields any useful information and often causes prisoners to say any stupid thing just to make it stop. I don't care. I also don't care if the people I torture are guilty of anything. If they just arrest you at random or have you confused with someone else, I'll torture you. I may not even pretend it has any value for national security or come up with bad spy novel stories about nuclear bombs that are about to go off and can only be prevented if I torture you. I just like the idea of torture and I know there are Americans out there who'll cheer me on. Even if it harms America's standing in the world and invites all sorts of comparisons with barbaric regimes.
So today I'm happy. Because I know now that if someone writes a memo rationalizing all this…if I can just say I was following orders "in good faith" — that's right, torturing people in "good faith" — I won't be prosecuted. If I shoplift a pack of gum, I'll go to jail…but inflicting pain on someone and bringing them as close as possible to death? What, you got a problem with that? Torture's not illegal if someone tells you what you're doing isn't really torture.
And I'm not stopping there. I'm going to find me a lawyer who'll write me a memo saying that if I walk into a bank with a gun, demand cash and flee with it, that doesn't constitute bank robbery. It won't be difficult to get that brief. You can find a lawyer who'll say anything. Then just as soon as a bank somewhere gets some money, I'll be set.
So it's a great day for those of us with no conscience, no bothersome notions about any "wrongness" in inflicting pain or death on another human being. This makes up for the killing spree I didn't get to go on because Phil Spector was acquitted. That verdict scared me because for a minute there, it looked like it might start a trend of punishing crimes of violence. Good to know we can still make exceptions, especially if it might embarrass someone.