Last modified: Thursday, May 21, 2009 10:16 AM PDT The Country Curmudgeon: Real torture By Roy Hicks I am constantly amazed by the naivete of liberals, particularly when it comes to defending ourselves against people who would murder us all in our beds. Some of these people moan about “torture” of captured Muslim terrorists, wailing about “enhanced interrogation techniques” of our deadly enemies like dressing them in women’s underwear, putting plastic sacks over their heads, subjecting them to sleep deprivation, loud music and barking dogs, dunking their heads in water to make them think they’re drowning and otherwise scaring the hell out of them by such non-fatal and indeed non-injurious techniques. “Torture is wrong,” they piously declare. “If we act like our enemies, how are we to distinguish ourselves from them?” In an imaginary world where everyone plays nice by civilized rules, they might have a case, but in this they don’t.  Let’s refine our terms.  “Torture” has been defined through the ages by the Mongols to the Spanish Inquisition to the Nazi Gestapo to the brutal Japanese of World War II. Real torture means things like breaking bodies on the rack, tearing out finger- and toe-nails with pliers, burning with hot irons, hanging with arms behind the back until shoulders are dislocated, giving enemas with high-pressure water hoses, brutal beatings with iron rods, roasting feet over slow fires and strangling victims by hanging them with piano wire.  “Torture” does not mean jailing captured Muslim terrorists at Guantanamo Bay. Being well-fed and provided with copies of the Koran is far better than they deserve. Ask our surviving POWs from Corregedor where they were starved, beaten with rifle butts and bayoneted if they couldn’t answer roll-call. That’s real torture, friends, and we don’t do any of that. If we have enemy prisoners with critical information to protect ourselves against another disastrous attack like 9/11 and can scare the hell out of them to give it up, no non-injurious holds should be barred. As former Vice President Dick Cheney now insists, information how these non-lethal “enhanced interrogation techniques” prevented another devastating 9/11-type attack on Los Angeles should now be fully disclosed. “Torture,” indeed. The best any enemy of our country can pray for is to be caught by American armed forces because that invariably means clean clothes, plenty to eat and such foolishness as affording them the protections of our civil courts and free legal representation for their terrorist monkeyshines, which is exactly what President Obama has proposed: to close the Marine prison at Guantanamo Bay by executive order. “I’m more than willing to explain to the families of 2,000 victims of a terrorist attack that they died because we didn’t dunk someone’s head underwater for 30 seconds than explain to them their loved ones died because leadership abandoned principles to provide nonexistent security,” one liberal commentator avers, bleating the standard mantra that we’ve brought this situation on ourselves, and it’s all George W. Bush’s fault. Sorry, but I’m not willing to make such an apology. If I ever confronted a Muslim terrorist who had information of a plot to kill thousands of Americans, I would peel his skin off an inch at a time with a red-hot knife to get that information and save our lives. Nevertheless, make no mistake: We have non-fatal techniques available to scare the bejabbers out of those Muslim maniacs and get them to blabber, but that is not “torture,” folks. We do not hack the heads off innocent prisoners like Daniel Pearl on videotape while those maniacal butchers chant “Allah is great!” Roy Hicks, a Payette resident, writes a weekly column for the Argus Observer. Comments or questions for Mr. Hicks can be directed to: Roy Hicks, Argus Observer Newsroom; 1160 S.W. Fourth St., Ontario, OR 97914