Friday, February 17, 2006

Torture time

CIA chief sacked for opposing torture
Sarah Baxter and Michael Smith, Washington

The CIA's top counter-terrorism official was fired last week because he opposed detaining Al-Qaeda suspects in secret prisons abroad, sending them to other countries for interrogation and using forms of torture such as water boarding, intelligence sources have claimed.

Robert Grenier, head of the CIA counter-terrorism centre, was relieved of his post after a year in the job. One intelligence official said he was "not quite as aggressive as he might have been" in pursuing Al-Qaeda leaders and networks. Vincent Cannistraro, a former head of counter-terrorism at the agency, said: "It is not that Grenier wasn't aggressive enough, it is that he wasn't "with the programme." He expressed misgivings about the secret prisons in Europe and the rendition of terrorists."

Geez, talk about someone who's not a team player. C'mon, Robert, everyone else is torturing, get with the program! Screw that thumb, c'mon Bob!

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-2036182,00.html



2 comments:

Anonymous said...

seriously! we need more progressive torturers at the helm. that's the only way we'll kick terror's butt. hell, water boarding sounds like fun!

Peter said...

Ah yes, but as we have spoken before, "it's hard for abstract nouns to surrender (or get their butts kicked). In fact it's very hard for abstract nouns to do anything at all of their own volition-even trained philologists can't negotiate with them. It's difficult to find their hide-outs, useless to try to cut off their supplies. The bitter semantic truth is that you can't win against these sort of words-unless, I suppose, you get them thrown out of the Oxford English Dictionary. That would show 'em. Admittedly, the Second World War was fought against fascism. But that particular abstract noun was cunningly hiding behind the very real Nazi government. We simply had to defeat Germany to win. In President Bush's war, there is no such solution. Saying "We will destroy terrorism" is about as meaningful as saying: "We shall annihilate mockery."

From Terry Jones of Python fame, of course.