Pentagon details abuse of Iraq detainees

U.S. special operations forces fed some Iraqi detainees only bread and water for up to 17 days, used unapproved interrogation practices such as sleep deprivation and loud music and stripped at least one prisoner[.]

The report concludes that the detainees’ treatment was wrong but not illegal and reflected inadequate resources and lack of oversight and proper guidance rather than deliberate abuse.

When I read this, my first inclination was to make some kind of derogatory comment about how the interrogators were just puppets of some sadistic cabal of neo-con puppet masters who find the Geneva Convention to be a tad “inconvenient.”

But then I realized, “Wait a minute. Put yourself in their shoes. Not in their actual shoes — that’s how you get athlete’s foot — but in a suitable facsimile of their shoes purchased from the local Army surplus store.”

I cried because I had no shoes, until I met a man who had no feet. Then I stole his wheelchair because what’s he gonna do, chase me?

And then I reminded myself, “You can’t just put yourself in their shoes. It’s not right to judge them until you’ve walked a mile in their shoes.” So I loaded up on granola and bottled water and beef jerky, strapped on a bedroll and pup tent, packed up my Coleman lantern, folded up my portable hibachi grill, slipped some iodine water purification capsules in my pocket, inserted the cyanide capsule into my hollow tooth, and set off on my journey.

Three days and seventy-two blisters later, I had all but covered that fabled mile. But just a few hundred feet from my destination, I was hit with a revelation, as well as a massive case of explosive diarrhea. I’m not really sure which came first. All I know is that one minute I was bathed in golden, holy light, and the next minute I was frantically digging a latrine with a camp shovel in Mrs. Baumgarten’s front yard. Everything got kind of hazy after that.

I do remember one thing very clearly. About halfway into my journey, I looked down, and I realized that there was a second set of footprints in the sand, right next to mine. At first I was kind of freaked out because, like, what the fuck are those doing there, you know? I started screaming, and punching in the air, and at one point I even broke out my nunchucks.

But then I realized that it’s okay, because those footprints belong to Jesus. Or the Invisible Man. Either way, still kind of cool. So then I was like, “Yo, sorry about the nunchucks,” and Jesus (or the Invisible Man) was like, “It’s cool. I blocked all your hits with my wicked bo-staff.”

So I walked with Invisible Jesus for a little while, and we talked about all sorts of stuff, like world peace, and African debt relief, and how neither of us could believe they killed of Mischa Barton’s character on “The O.C.” And then, all of a sudden, his footprints were gone.

I was like, “Hey, man. I think you’re flying or something.” And Jesus was like, “No, I’m not. I’m carrying you.” And I was like, “What are you, high? You’re not carrying me. I’m standing right here.” And then he was all, “Dude, I’m totally carrying you right now. Can’t you feel that? I’m giving you the shocker.” That’s where things started getting weird.

“Do you believe in the future?” he asked.

“What kind of stupid fucking question is that?” I responded. “Of course I do. Who doesn’t believe in the future? It’s not like you’re asking me to believe in unicorns or something.”

“Do you believe in a future where the world is run by computers, where the government has been hijacked by vagrants and thieves, and where the only religion is the Church Of Corporate Greed?”

“Well, um … that sounds a lot like the present, actually,” I pointed out.

“Yeah, the future’s like that too. Except with more robots.”

Then he paused meaningfully, as if he was about to reveal a great universal truth from a future unknown to mortal men. As I braced myself to receive the Word Of The Lord, he spoke.

“I’m totally touching your balls right now.”

If I can give you one piece of advice in your life, it’s this: If you’re ever walking on the beach, and there’s suddenly footprints beside you in the sand, it might be Jesus. But there’s also a good possibility it’s An Invisible Pervert From The Future.

Anyway, I’m getting off topic. What I’m trying to do is tell you the revelation I had right before soiling Mrs. Baumgarten’s lawn with a torrent of liquid poo. It’s kind of a three-parter.

Part one: Never use water from a mud puddle to reconstitute a package of freeze-dried astronaut ice cream you bought during a trip to the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum back in 7th grade. The ice cream tastes like chalk, and there’s a good chance that the mud puddle is contaminated with either anti-freeze or amoebic dysentery.

Part two: A mile is really, really far. Like, isn’t this why we invented cars? Who walks a mile nowadays, no matter whose shoes you’re wearing? Seriously! It’s ridiculous.

Part three: The reason that our interrogators abused prisoners was not because of a system-wide tolerance and advocacy of torture, but because nobody told them not to.

Now, at first, this third one seemed counterintuitive to me. Then I realized that I was guilty of the very same sort of behavior in my own life.

For example, I once thought it was perfectly acceptable to press my little brother’s face against a radiator until it made steam. Sure, I left him permanently disfigured and psychologically scarred … but does that make me a bad person? Of course not. My parents never explicitly outlined any rules forbidding me from turning my sibling’s face into a twisted horror of burnt meat and scar tissue. How was I to know any better?

After all, I was only 19 at the time.

The Bush administration has been criticized internationally, including by U.S. allies, for abusive treatment of terror war detainees. Late last year, Congress forced Bush to accept a ban on the cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment of prisoners by U.S. troops.

When are we going to take a stand against these activist Congressmen who impede the concentration of absolute, unrestrained power in the hands of the President?

I hope on Election Day, America speaks loudly with its votes to tell Congress, “Stop imposing your Judeo-Christian idea of morality on us and let us blindly follow the semi-retarded Christ figure God has chosen to guide us in this time of woe!”

Anyone with even a passing understanding of the Bible knows that God has no problem with cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment.

That’s why he invented marriage.

Schwarzenegger to order troops to border

“It is not my preference to send the National Guard, but there’s an important need to protect the border,” [Schwarzenegger] said.

Damn straight there is. Personally, I can’t sleep at night unless I know there’s a battalion of trigger-happy 18-year-old soldiers with PTSD still twitching from their fourth stop-lossed tour of Iraq guarding our borders. How else are we supposed to stop all these filthy immigrants from invading our country to clean our toilets, valet park our cars, and raise our celebrities’ kids?

I don’t think I’m alone when I say I’m looking forward to the day when I have to choose between working 14 hours in the blazing sun to pick my own strawberries, or mortgaging my house to buy a watermelon from the supermarket.

Right To Work: This Harvard grad will finally get to put his MBA in Business Administration to work when he starts his new job selling oranges from a stolen shopping cart on a freeway offramp.

I’m sick of all these wetbacks sneaking into the country, taking jobs away from good, hard-working Americans. Thanks to our porous borders, Manuel Rodriguez from Ixtapa has a job cleaning septic tanks for $2.50 an hour, and Stanford Whitmore from Connecticut is still looking for work. And I’m guessing that Manuel doesn’t have to pay back loans on a Harvard MBA. How is that fair? That’s right. It’s not.

Newsflash, Paco: If you want to come to our country, you don’t swim across a river of sewage, slip under a chainlink fence, and dodge your way across 8 lanes of traffic while under heavy automatic weapons fire.

Instead, you do it the legal way: sell your 10-year-old sister as a sex slave to a drug lord to pay for the $120 visa application fee, smuggle a balloon full of heroin in your anus for money to bribe the police to allow safe passage to the post office so you can mail the application, wait 4 years for the application to be processed and rejected, dig a tunnel under the perimeter fence at the Mexico City airport, sneak into the wheel well of an Aeromexico jumbo jet, and cling to the landing gear in an airless, sub-zero environment for six hours at 37,000 feet.

Sound too difficult? Well, too bad, compadre. This is America we’re talking about. The American dream doesn’t come cheap. You wanna come to our country and do menial jobs for less than a living wage? You’re gonna have to work for it. We don’t hand those out on a silver platter.

Remember … Washing dishes for 75 cents an hour is a privilege, not a right.

It also establishes rules of engagement prohibiting Guardsmen from handling detainees, but allowing them to carry guns. The rules are similar to those the California Guard follows when deploying to a riot, officials said.

This is an extremely important provision. Why handle a detainee when you can just shoot him from a sniper tower a half-mile away? It’s cleaner that way, and then there’s less chance of coming in contact with germs that could turn you Mexican.