Fuck the World

That's basically all our government has been saying to the international community, especially the Muslim world: Fuck the world, starting with you ragheads. Because what else could Uncle Sam be saying when we hear the details of long-suppressed reports in which CIA interrogators staged mock executions by threatening to shoot suspects and operating drills near their heads?

That alone flouts American law, in which interrogators are forbidden to threaten "imminent death." And what's truly frightening is not only that the CIA deliberately broke US law by threatening executions but even did so on their own. According to the Isikoff/Hosenball article for Newsweek, "Mock executions were not authorized in Justice Department memoranda that outlined the legal parameters that Bush administration lawyers believed should govern the use of 'enhanced' interrogations." Got that? They went beyond even what Alberto Gonzales, Jay Bybee and John Yoo pulled out of their asses and authorized.

But they knew what they were doing was wrong because the videotapes that almost surely documented these mock executions were destroyed years ago. So it's not as if the CIA interrogators are amoral sociopaths who didn't know right from wrong. They knew damned well what they were doing. And they destroyed at least 92 tapes to cover their asses.

Such tactics were done a few years later in 24, a show that Joel Surnow created for Fox so he could short-stroke to Jack Bauer's torturous exploits.

In real life, however, mock executions were done by the Iranians, whose Revolutionary Guard has been officially designated a terrorist organization, to 53 of our countrymen during the hostage crisis. Cmdr. Lloyd Bucher, CO of the USS Pueblo, was captured by North Korean soldiers and subjected to a mock firing squad. The North Koreans were designated by Bush as one third of the "Axis of Evil."

Twenty years ago, a Marine officer was fired for carrying out mock executions with blanks into war game scenarios in Norway.

In Nicaragua under the Sandinistas once reviled by Ronnie Reagan and George HW Bush prisoners were brutally beaten, were subjected to mock executions and believable death threats were made against family members.

So what does this say about us? That we are no better than the nations and governments that we criticize for human right abuses, that we're not a fucking bit better than other nations that torture. That we think we can get away with this because our national security is more important than anyone's else's. And what do we say in return?

Fuck the world.

Well, we'd get off very lightly if the world doesn't one day say to us, "Well, fuck you, too."