According to the experts on interrogation techniques within our own armed forces and of those in our sister countries, torture is clearly the most inefficient method to gather accurate and valuable information from an adversary. 

 This is the net product of years of study and review of the diverse methods of gathering information by the world’s foremost intelligence agencies – it is also plain common sense; a person is more likely to open up to a friend than to open up to an enemy - a person under torture will say anything that he believes the torturer wants to hear in order to stop the pain. After being subjected to torture the prisoner will never trust the torturer, the possibility of gathering accurate and useful information through any other means vanishes forever. When our leaders under the Bush administration decided to use torture they were clearly advised by our armed forces that:

1 – Torture is illegal under our own domestic laws and under international laws

2 – Torture does not produce trustworthy nor accurate information.

3 – Torturing others opens up the right for our enemies to justify torture upon our own citizens and soldiers.

4 – Torture demoralizes and negatively affects both the torturer and the tortured. 

However despite the tremendous amount of evidence to the absurdity of the use of torture and its many negative effects, our leaders chose a needless and wanton departure from common sense, established custom and law; thusly we were led astray into this angry, dark and defiled path that has marred our country’s character and our very identity as Americans.  

How did this happen?   

In one word it happened because of fear. The people that rose to power with GW are a group of individuals that live in a world of fear. They are afraid, very afraid. 

They feared openness, they feared clarity - from the beginning they instituted an atmosphere of “Us VS Them” as they set about changing our traditionally open society into a two-tiered structure; on the outside were the multitude of ordinary Americans living their day to day lives, while on the inside there was a privileged, ideologically pure cadre, dwelling inside a “virtual” closed city much like the Beijing of old or like the Kremlin of the tsars and of the old USSR. Loyalty was demanded and expected, fear was the enforcer while political posts, assigment of profitable contracts and legislative goodies were the rewards. 

V.P. Cheney of course stands out as the architect and engineer of this new vision of American society, he showed his nature from the beggining, remember his secret meetings for crafting energy policy (we still do not know who exactly attended that fateful meeting) - and the rude F*ck you! He directed towards Senator Patrick Leahy, in response to his questioning his Halliburton connections on the floor of the U.S. Senate. 

Mr. Cheney has always displayed his fearful nature and hyper-sensitivity. This irrational fearfulness also explains his draft evasion and his pseudo-patriotism. His cronies who are mostly memebers of the "chicken hawk" club, see danger and enemies at every turn; “if you are not with us you are against us” is their battle cry. This also explains our isolation from the world during G.W.’s term in office and the abdication of long standing mutually beneficial international treaties.  

Indeed within the Republican party, this psychotic fear extends towards our very own system of governance and democratic principles – So many have bought in to the erroneous idea that it is cool and politically correct to fear and hate our own government (and therefore our constitution). To those who ascribe to the idea that our constitutionally established, democratically elected government is “the problem”, I have only one question to ask; what is it that you fear from a government “by the people and for the people”? What is it about our founding fathers and our constitution that causes such fear and loathing? 

The America I know and love does not fear, it is a country that is secure of itself and of its values. It has a government based on freedom, liberty and human rights.