Biscuit Variety Pack

Ted over at Crooked Timber writes an open letter to The New Republic, asking them why they think that Amnesty International's use of a word is more important to talk about than the Bush administration's use of torture.

Digby talks about tasering, and, eek, police applying pepper spray to the inside of nonviolent protestors' eyelids to force them to cooperate:

There are reasons why it is a bad idea for police to be allowed to inflict pain on people who are uncooperative or disagreeable --- the most important being that this means police are sanctioned to commit violence on the public under color of law in instances where their safety is not at issue. That's one of the hallmarks of a police state not a free society. (And yes, I realize that Saddam pulled the legs off of puppies on Christmas morning and I'm damned lucky not to be living under that kind of hellish nightmare. But every lil' totalitarian has to start somewhere.)

It's not just Gitmo. Sophisticated torture techniques are becoming common policing and interrogation methods in America. I remember watching the excrutiating video of police meticulously applying q-tips dipped in pepper spray to the inside of logging protesters' eyelids when they refused to unchain themselves from one another. It was explained that because they weren't actually blinded or permanently harmed, this was really the humane way to get them to cooperate. The most chilling thing about this was the dry, benign way the police calmly went about methodically pulling the immobile protesters' heads back and then their eyelids, to carefully daub the painful chemicals directly into the eye as they screamed in agony. Don't ever think that the systematic "banality of evil" regime couldn't happen here. The police didn't seem to be enjoying themselves, nor were they bothered. It was just all in day's work.

Did you know police did that right here in the U.S. of A.? Cuz I sure did not.

Oh, and on the Downing Street Memo, via Salon:

Jim Cox, USA Today's senior assignment editor for foreign news, offers up an explanation in his paper today that would do George W. Bush proud: "We could not obtain the memo or a copy of it from a reliable source," Cox says. "There was no explicit confirmation of its authenticity from (Blair's office). And it was disclosed four days before the British elections, raising concerns about the timing."