Just to keep tabs on what torture is--and isn't--in the view of the wingnuts.
First, a reminder about what the law
says about torture and suffering:
Article 32. A protected person/s shall not have anything done to them of such a character as to cause physical suffering or extermination ... the physical suffering or extermination of protected persons in their hands. This prohibition applies not only to murder, torture, corporal punishments, mutilation and medical or scientific experiments not necessitated by the medical treatment' While popular debate remains on what constitutes a legal definition of torture (see discussion on the Torture page), the ban on corporal punishment simplifies the matter; even the most mundane physical abuse is thereby forbidden by Article 32, as a precaution against alternate definitions of torture. (See Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse.)
But the administration thinks that it's legal ("not torture," never mind that it's physical and mental abuse anyway)...
Yoo wrote that threats of death are permissible if they do not threaten "imminent death," and that drugs designed to disrupt the personality may be administered so long as they do not "penetrate to the core of an individual's ability to perceive the world around him." He said that the law prohibiting torture did not prevent interrogators from inflicting mental harm so long as it was not "prolonged." Physical pain could be inflicted so long as it was less severe than the pain associated with "serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death."
But on to the wingnuts!
Here, courtesy of NewSmack, the hallucinogen of choice for that community, we have that epitome of civil behavior, Mel Gibson suggesting that Michael Richards is being tortured.
... Michael Richards has an ally: Mel Gibson. "I felt like sending Michael Richards a note," Gibson says in an interview in Entertainment Weekly's Dec. 8 issue.
"I feel really badly for the guy. He was obviously in a state of stress. You don't need to be inebriated to be bent out of shape. But my heart went out to the guy."
The 50-year-old actor-director added: "They'll probably torture him for a while and then let him go. I like him."
Uh, someone needs to educate Mel; Richards isn't in the hands of the occupying power. He's not a protected person. The American media and public are free to torture him with their opinions of him and his actions, just as they're free to torture Mel "I am not an anti-Semite" Gibson and O.J. "If I Did It..." Simpson.
One last sneer for outta-touch Mel;
"Apocalypto," is a Mayan-language flick he's filmed in Mexico which is about the decline of the Mayan civilization. What does Mel think about it?
He's confident his past remarks will not hurt the movie at the box office.
"It's primarily entertainment," he says of his production. "An 18-year-old college guy, out with his buddies, he's going to get into the chase.
Yeah, those 18-year old American guys are suckers for those Mayan-language chase epics. This guy's as out of touch as... well, Simpson--or George Wills.