I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream

Movement conservatives' public support for torture has contradicted even their own cherished mythology. The only constant has been their unyielding conviction in their own righteousness. Consider – they love to invoke WWII, if simplistically and inaccurately, yelling that every new threat is a new Hitler and anything less than belligerence is "appeasement." Yet they ignore that during WWII, we prosecuted the same torture and abuses they've defended under Bush. The Cult of Saint Ronnie still worships the poor policy and cartoonish morality of Reagan denouncing the Soviet Union as an "evil empire." (In his recent Reagan book, Will Bunch relates that Reagan himself regretted using the phrase, and later the far right accused Reagan of being Chamberlain for dealing with the Soviets.) Yet the torture program instituted under Bush borrowed directly from the hated Soviets. The key reason given for invading Iraq was that it had WMD and was an imminent threat, but Saddam Hussein was also depicted (fantastically) as the next Hitler and (accurately) as a dictator and torturer. The Hussein regime's victims were invoked more often after the invasion as a way to browbeat Iraq critics. So how is it that what made Hussein evil became good when done by the United States? When Iraqi Muntadar al-Zaidi threw a shoe at Bush, several far-right conservatives approved of the broken hand and ribs he received in prison. As Roy Edroso quipped, “I always suspected that when they were denouncing Saddam’s torture chambers, they were just angry that they didn’t get to say who got tortured.”

.................

Whatever one's feelings about how to treat actual terrorists, we have imprisoned, tortured and murdered innocent people. Prisoners were tortured when there was no ticking time bomb. The abuses at Abu Ghraib, Bagram and Guantanamo were not the result of "bad apples" but instead deliberate policies of abuse dictated from the very top. And the Bush administration received plenty of warnings before, during and after those decisions that they ignored, squelched or even punished.

more:
http://vagabondscholar.blogspot.com/2009/07/i-have-no-mouth-and-i-must-scream.html

Most fucked up game ever.

In my uglier days I can relate to the AI's misanthropy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paranoia_(role-playing_game)

Personally I think it's effin' brilliant..

Harlan Ellision himself co-designed it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Have_No_Mouth,_and_I_Must_Scream_(video_game)

:-(

on edit: "how is it that what made Hussein evil became good when done by the United States?"

How is it that Saddam's evil was just fine by us as long as he was an asset of ours? He was 'good', torture, oppression and all, before he was 'evil', if you get my drift...

version of the same thing? The policies remain as do the "justifications" for criminality,
:kick: & R

the question of the century.

because terrorists have your grandmother and a thousand other elderly people, plus children, somewhere in a building that they are going to blow up, and without our government torturing a Muslim, they may all die.

:sarcasm: