Terror Pictures, Torture Pictures

Declassification of the torture memos was big news a couple of weeks ago, with the glaring omission of what terror attacks were prevented by the water boarding. The news media did not seem to care though. Instead of “moving on” they enjoyed their “back to the future” moment of wallowing in the gloried past of the Bush administration’s “atrocities.”

This week the Obama administration is going to give us another dose of the “America is evil” evidence by releasing photos and other visual evidence that shows Bush, Cheney and others allowing rogue CIA agents to do terrible things to helpless Muslims who were innocently targeted and hustled off to Guantanamo.

This has made me think of other images of atrocity that I would actually like to see to remind me of our enemy’s brutality.

On September 11th, 2001 numerous people plummeted 1200+ feet out of the world trade center because they determined that dying of an impact on concrete after falling about mile to earth at a speed of 32 feet per second squared (the speed of gravity for those of you who aren’t into physics) was preferable to burning to death in the stricken towers.

I’m not suggesting that it would be nice to see pictures of the splattered remains of Americans on the downtown New York sidewalk but it would remind American’s that the brutality suffered by our citizens that day was infinitely worse than the fate suffered by two avowed terrorists who got some water poured over their heads. I bet the pictures of the bodies on pavement would be a lot more dramatic as well than pictures of wet middle easterners. In fact, I have some pictures of a wet cat after a bath that are much more dramatic and brutal looking than the water boarding “centerfold” spread we will see this week.

Since the water boarding has been proven to prevent many more 9/11 type casualties, maybe the news media and the general public that gets their information from them would realize how silly it is to harangue our intelligence service personal and Bush administration lawyers over the issue of water boarding anymore. Having brutal pictures from 9/11 released would surely put all of this controversy in perspective.

One of the attacks that the water boarding prevented was a plot to detonate bombs in subway trains in tunnels under New York’s rivers which would have flooded the city’s underground network of subway tunnels and killed many thousands of people. Another attack was planned that involved flying a plane into the tallest building in Los Angeles with results similar to 9/11.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. It must be true because we don’t get to see 9/11 footage on TV anymore. The mainstream media must think it’s inconveniently truthful.