The Myth of the Ticking Time Bomb

[Briar]

The Myth of the Ticking Time Bomb
by Alfred W. McCoy


Ask not for whom the bomb ticks, Mr. and Ms. America. Right now, across Los Angeles, timers on dozens of toxic nerve-gas canisters are set to detonate in just hours and send some two million Americans to their deaths in writhing agony.

But take hope. We have one chance, just one, to avert this atrocity and save the lives of millions. Agent Jack Bauer of the Counter Terrorist Unit has his hunting knife poised over the eye of a trembling traitor who may know the identity of those who set these bombs. As a clock ticks menacingly and the camera focuses on knife point poised to plunge into eyeball, the traitor breaks and identifies the Muslim terrorists, giving Agent Bauer the lead he needs to crack this case wide open.

As happens with mind-numbing regularity every week on Fox Television’s hit show 24, torture has once again worked to save us all from the terror of a ticking bomb, affirming for millions of loyal viewers that torture is a necessary weapon in George Bush’s war on terror.

"Major success from limited, surgical torture is a fable, a fiction. . . As we slide down the slippery slope to torture in general, we should also realize that there is a chasm at the bottom called extrajudicial execution."

...

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0925-26.htm

[Wilber_Stool]

1. A red-hot poker is poised above the terrorist

A brief case sized nuclear device is set to go off in New York City.
Time and again the iron blackens the flesh of the terrorist.
He claims to know nothing
The deadline approaches.
3….2….1….0.
Nothing happens.
The terrorist is dead.
The intelligence was wrong, again. Fortunately, we told no one.