How to give the torture test.

It’s time we put an end to all this torture talk by declaring that there is no longer such a thing as torture. The entire concept of torture has been defined away in a series of policy statements.

The beauty of policy is that it can coat the most garish of brutalities with the beige slime of value-free language thus removing the atrocity from the cauldron of evil and reducing it to a matter of bureaucratic routine.

Our Department of Justice has stated very clearly that if a procedure does not kill, cause the loss of a bodily organ or the loss of a bodily function, it is not torture. And they should know because they're all lawyers. In other words, if the subject leaves the interrogation room alive and with all his organs in place and functioning, he wasn’t tortured, no matter how bloodied or traumatized he is.

There is an easy test to demonstrate this truth, which I call it the Gonzales test. The next time someone complains about torture, ask them to place the first joint of their index finger on a hard, flat surface. Then take a ball-peen hammer and slam it down on the fingernail with all the force you can muster.

It hurts like hell, but it ain’t torture because:

· It didn’t kill them.
· A fingernail isn’t a bodily organ.
· No bodily function was impaired except picking his nose.

Case closed.

Carry the ball-peen hammer with you, and the next time some bleeding heart starts moaning about the evils of torture, ask him to place the first joint of his index finger on a hard, flat surface…

--Belacqua Jones