Torture quotations

Page 3

◆ Never hide things from hardcore thinkers. They get more aggravated, more provoked by confusion than the most painful truths.

- Criss Jami99

◆ If Waterboarding is okay, then why don't we let our police do it to criminals so they can find out what they know? Because it's against the law. If we're not going to be a country that stand's for the rule of law, when it's convenient or inconvenient, then what DO we stand for.

- Jesse Ventura98

◆ I got hold of a copy of the video that showed how Saddam Hussein had actually confirmed himself in power. This snuff-movie opens with a plenary session of the Ba'ath Party central committee: perhaps a hundred men. Suddenly the doors are locked and Saddam, in the chair, announces a special session. Into the room is dragged an obviously broken man, who begins to emit a robotic confession of treason and subversion, that he sobs has been instigated by Syrian and other agents. As the (literally) extorted confession unfolds, names begin to be named. Once a fellow-conspirator is identified, guards come to his seat and haul him from the room. The reclining Saddam, meanwhile, lights a large cigar and contentedly scans his dossiers. The sickness of fear in the room is such that men begin to crack up and weep, rising to their feet to shout hysterical praise, even love, for the leader. Inexorably, though, the cull continues, and faces and bodies go slack as their owners are pinioned and led away. When it is over, about half the committee members are left, moaning with relief and heaving with ardent love for the boss. (In an accompanying sequel, which I have not seen, they were apparently required to go into the yard outside and shoot the other half, thus sealing the pact with Saddam. I am not sure that even Beria or Himmler would have had the nerve and ingenuity and cruelty to come up with that.)

- Christopher Hitchens98

◆ The entire affective world, constructed over the years with utmost difficulty, collapses with a kick in the father's genitals, a smack on the mother's face, an obscene insult to the sister, or the sexual violation of a daughter. Suddenly an entire culture based on familial love, devotion, the capacity for mutual sacrifice collapses. Nothing is possible in such a universe, and that is precisely what the torturers know… From my cell, I'd hear the whispered voices of children trying to learn what was happening to their parents, and I'd witness the efforts of daughters to win over a guard, to arouse a feeling of tenderness in him, to incite the hope of some lovely future relationship between them in order to learn what was happening to her mother, to get an orange sent to her, to get permission for her to go to the bathroom.

- Jacobo Timerman98

◆ He would have been half-hanged, taken down alive, castrated, his genitals stuffed in his mouth, his stomach slit open, and his intestines taken out and burnt, and his carcase chopped into four quarters.

- John Broadbent98

◆ Control freak will be tortured by post power syndrome.

- Toba Beta98

◆ Enhanced Interrogation is Dick Cheney changing a word, Dick Cheney comes up with a new word to cover his ass!

- Jesse Ventura98

◆ Anyone even remotely suspect was interrogated, because interrogation is by far the most effective method of speedily banishing inappropriate thoughts from the mind.

- Olli Jalonen98

◆ Die Folter war [...] praktizierte Schutzpflicht des Souver?ns für seine Untertanen.

- Heribert Prantl98

◆ Some say that it is lack of imagination which makes men and women brutes. May it not be power of imagination? The interest of torturing is lessened, is almost lost, if we can not be the tortured as well as the torturer.

- Robert Smythe Hichens98

◆ Now they're really amused, and burst into laughter. Someone tries a variation while still clapping hands: 'Clipped prick… clipped prick.' Whereupon they begin alternating while clapping their hands: 'Jew… Clipped prick… Jew… Clipped prick.' It seems they're no longer angry, merely having a good time. I keep bouncing in the chair and moaning as the electric shocks penetrate [....]

- Jacobo Timerman98

◆ Foltern zerst?rt die zivile Basis des Zusammenlebens.

- Heribert Prantl98

◆ Her face expressed suffering so deep that I will never forget it; her eyes radiated a deep sadness...Mrs. Folmer was oppressed by that special sadness, perhaps the most horrible torture, of those who had no idea what happened to their loved ones.

- Diet Eman98

◆ Der Lebensschutz des potentiellen Opfers soll mehr wiegen als die Menschenwürde des potenziellen T?ters.

- Heribert Prantl98

◆ If you torture the data long enough, it will confess.

- Ronald H. Coase98