The Biscuit Report: Resources on Torture

Saturday, January 08, 2005

At 4:00 AM, R J Keefe said...: Torture is close to the top of the list of things that I haven't wanted to think about. I had an armful of rationalizations, but Biscuit's outrage finally
made me see that they are nothing but rationalizations, and that I have no good reason, period, for not thinking about torture. So I have begun to cross that bar. I thought about it quite a lot on a transatlantic flight the other night. And I'm thinking a lot about it here, in Istanbul, where I'm accompanying my wife on a business trip. Reading Orhan Pamuk's Smoke keeps me from falling into complete tourist mode, as does the impossibility of finding anybody who will talk about the book (not that I'm pressing the matter). I do recommend it to anyone who is curious about the notion that torture is a necessary evil of which those in power must, for the general welfare, make use.