This was going to be a post on the impending demise of the wonderful free book exchange at the North Park Village Recycling Center. It seems that wonderful all-volunteer institution of long standing is going to be extinguished by Daley's Department of Streets and Sanitation at the end of the month.
Liberal Democrats like Daley and the area's Alderman Margaret Laurino, always make grand pronouncements on the need for voluntary civic involvement, but when given the choice between citizens doing something for themselves and expanding their own bureaucratic powers and payrolls, the latter will inevitably win out -- as is the case here.
But that story can wait a few days.
This is about a book that I just picked up there: "Scars & Stripes" by Eugene B. McDaniel, Capt. USN.
It is a chronicle of his 6 years as a prisoner of war as a guest of the North Vietnamese Communists in the hellish "Hanoi Hilton," POW camp.
It is pertainent today in light of the news story that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, one of the alleged masterminds of the September 11, 2001 Islamo-Fascist mass murders in New York, is saying that he underwent "punishing bouts of interrogation," administered by the CIA.
The ever-blaming-America-Firsters at the ACLU are pursuing legal action on his behalf. They want to open up Bush era documents regarding the interrogation program.
But the murderous Shaikh says that he managed to lie to the CIA despite his "punishing" regimen.
This leads me to believe that it likely was not all that punishing -- not brutal -- not torturous.
It was probably a game of paddy cake compared to the interrogation that Captain "Red"McDaniel and hundreds of other American servicemen in his predicament underwent.
How about this, Shaikh Mohammed?
Were your pants pulled down, while your arms were in irons and were you beaten on the buttocks 70 times with a knotted fan belt until your posterior resembled ground beef?
Were you forced to kneel on a pitted stone floor for as much as 9 hours on end, with your iron manacled hands held up above your head? Were you beaten unmercifully if you lowered your arms from exhaustion?
Shaikh, did these evil American interrogators bind your arms behind your back and attach the ropes to a winch and raise you up off the ground until your shoulders separated and one of your arms broke?
Were you then dropped to the stone floor and kicked repeatedly in the head, groin, stomach and limbs?
Were you sleep deprived for 7 straight days, while all this was going on?
Were you electroshocked repeatedly to the point of unconsciousness, woken up and then shocked repeatedly some more?
Did you endure the aforementioned regimen non-stop for 14 straight days with negligible nourishment virtually no sleep and no medical care?
That, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, is what one might call a "punishing bout of interrogation." And it is precisely what the barbarian Vietnamese promulgated on Red McDaniel and their other American POW victims.
I don't think you endured anything nearly like that, Shaikh.
And Americans would do well to keep the truly barbaric torture that our brave servicemen endured at the hands of the Vietnamese and earlier the Red Chinese and Japanese, when the ACLU pea-brained propagandists start bandying about words like torture.
Shaikh Mohammed -- I think that it will emerge that compared to Red McDaniel, you had a day at the beach.
Liberal Democrats like Daley and the area's Alderman Margaret Laurino, always make grand pronouncements on the need for voluntary civic involvement, but when given the choice between citizens doing something for themselves and expanding their own bureaucratic powers and payrolls, the latter will inevitably win out -- as is the case here.
But that story can wait a few days.
This is about a book that I just picked up there: "Scars & Stripes" by Eugene B. McDaniel, Capt. USN.
It is a chronicle of his 6 years as a prisoner of war as a guest of the North Vietnamese Communists in the hellish "Hanoi Hilton," POW camp.
It is pertainent today in light of the news story that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, one of the alleged masterminds of the September 11, 2001 Islamo-Fascist mass murders in New York, is saying that he underwent "punishing bouts of interrogation," administered by the CIA.
The ever-blaming-America-Firsters at the ACLU are pursuing legal action on his behalf. They want to open up Bush era documents regarding the interrogation program.
But the murderous Shaikh says that he managed to lie to the CIA despite his "punishing" regimen.
This leads me to believe that it likely was not all that punishing -- not brutal -- not torturous.
It was probably a game of paddy cake compared to the interrogation that Captain "Red"McDaniel and hundreds of other American servicemen in his predicament underwent.
How about this, Shaikh Mohammed?
Were your pants pulled down, while your arms were in irons and were you beaten on the buttocks 70 times with a knotted fan belt until your posterior resembled ground beef?
Were you forced to kneel on a pitted stone floor for as much as 9 hours on end, with your iron manacled hands held up above your head? Were you beaten unmercifully if you lowered your arms from exhaustion?
Shaikh, did these evil American interrogators bind your arms behind your back and attach the ropes to a winch and raise you up off the ground until your shoulders separated and one of your arms broke?
Were you then dropped to the stone floor and kicked repeatedly in the head, groin, stomach and limbs?
Were you sleep deprived for 7 straight days, while all this was going on?
Were you electroshocked repeatedly to the point of unconsciousness, woken up and then shocked repeatedly some more?
Did you endure the aforementioned regimen non-stop for 14 straight days with negligible nourishment virtually no sleep and no medical care?
That, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, is what one might call a "punishing bout of interrogation." And it is precisely what the barbarian Vietnamese promulgated on Red McDaniel and their other American POW victims.
I don't think you endured anything nearly like that, Shaikh.
And Americans would do well to keep the truly barbaric torture that our brave servicemen endured at the hands of the Vietnamese and earlier the Red Chinese and Japanese, when the ACLU pea-brained propagandists start bandying about words like torture.
Shaikh Mohammed -- I think that it will emerge that compared to Red McDaniel, you had a day at the beach.
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Comments invited, however anonymous commentors had better deal directly with the issues raised and avoid ad hominem drivel. As for Teachers' Union seminar writers -- forget about it.