The Proper Response to Torture

In a civilized society, there can be only one response to officially sanctioned torture:

"When I say jail, you say—"

"Bush!"

"Jail who?"

"Bush!"

"Put Bush where?"

"Jail!"

Torture is nothing but a means to the end of terrorizing those in your custody and the community from which they come, and for getting those in your custody to say absolutely anything you want them to say.

Under oath and on the lives of their children torture victims will attest to the details of whatever "confession" is placed in front of them. It is the preferred method of political control by authoritarian regimes throughout history, which is why the Right is so madly in love with it:
from their slack jaws to their tiny, cloven hooves, Conservatives genuinely believe that if you just hook a big enough car battery up to Truth's genitals and pound on History's skull hard enough with a big enough hammer, the bones of Reality itself can be tortured into mush and their cowardice and utter failures as citizens and Christians can be made to disappear.


From the Chicago Reader

A Convict's Odyssey
When he was 16, Mark Clements talked his way into four life sentences. Twenty-eight years later, he talked his way out.

By Steve Bogira

One sunny March morning, freed murder convict and tireless rabble-rouser Mark Clements was getting the kind of attention that had eluded him in the nearly three decades he spent in prison. Clements was leading a small rally outside the dreary Cook County Criminal Courthouse at 26th and California. The demonstrators were celebrating the fact that Jon Burge, the notorious former Chicago police commander, would be reporting to prison in North Carolina on this particular day to begin a four-and-a-half-year sentence for obstruction of justice and perjury. Burge oversaw the torture of innumerable suspects in south-side police stations in the 1970s and '80s, and the fallout from that scandal helped Clements extricate himself from a life sentence.

Clements, who's 46 and African-American, has a broad face with full eyebrows, a thin mustache, and gapped teeth. He's balding and his back is rounded. He wore a hooded sweatshirt and dress slacks. He has a playful side, but he'd left it at home this morning. He'd alerted media to the rally, and before it began he strode across California Boulevard to meet a Fox Chicago reporter and cameraman.

"I'm an Area Three torture victim of Daniel McWeeny and John McCann," he told the reporter, a young Asian woman.

The reporter was confused; he wasn't tortured by Burge? Clements explained that the vast majority of torture victims weren't victimized by Burge himself but by detectives under his command. The detectives who Clements says tortured him at Area Three in 1981 weren't even under Burge's command—Burge was serving at Area Two then—but Clements knows how to smooth corners for TV.

"You were 16 at the time?" the reporter asked.

"Yes."

"You spent 28 years in prison?"

"Yes."

"For a crime you didn't commit?"

"For a crime I didn't commit."

"Thank you so much for giving me your story so quickly," the reporter said.

Clements hustled back across the boulevard. A band of 13 people stood idly in front of the courthouse steps, awaiting his direction. Some held signs: Torture Victims Need New Trial, Honk If You Are Against Torture. A middle-aged woman's T-shirt said, "I have multiple personalities and none of them like you."

Clements pulled them into a circle. "I got a famous chant," he told them. "We'll do that a little bit, then when they're ready to operate the cameras, we'll be ready to go."

He raised his voice: "When I say jail, you say—"

"Burge!"

"Jail who?"

"Burge!"

"Put Burge where?"

"Jail!"

"And every cop who tortured African-Americans and Latinos!" Clements thundered.

He took a bullhorn from a demonstrator, reached it skyward like a starter does his pistol, and boomed: "OK—23 sirens in solidarity with the 23 men that remain incarcerated as a result of Jon Burge and his torture!" He pressed a button on the bullhorn, and a siren split the air. He let it wail 23 times. Lawyers and defendants eyed Clements quizzically as they passed.

"OK, now we'll go with the statement," Clements told his crew.

He leaned over a mike in front of two cameras and began, "Today, we are gathered here in bittersweet victory. At this very moment, Jon Burge is entering a prison in North Carolina." But, he said, something needed to be done about the men still in prison because of the false confessions that were allegedly beaten out of them. "There are mothers crying. There are sons who are in prison dying. . . .The constitution does not give you the right to lock up people who you know are innocent."

Marlene Martin, national director of the Campaign to End the Death Penalty, spoke briefly. "Mark Clements spent 28 years in prison for a crime he didn't commit!" she yelled. "How many other Mark Clementses are still in prison?"

Clements resumed the mike. "Hey, guess what?" he said. "Burge is reporting to North Carolina prison right now!"

"Tell him don't drop the soap!" one of the demonstrators called out, to gleeful laughter.

"Mr. Burge, welcome home," Clements said.
...

If you cheer for torture, you are unfit to be an American.

If you authorized, condoned or participated in torture, you should rot in prison.

Period.