I could have sworn that I spoke English pretty well. I mean, I’ve always been confident, able to communicate and rarely had extreme misunderstandings with other people who also seemed to think they were speaking English.

Then I read the quote below and I wondered if I have even the slightest grasp whatsoever of the language we all claim to have in common. I mean, do we have it in common at all or do we just make similar-sounding noises whilst all the while each taking completely different meaning from the conversation.

This man is talking about the rack. The medieval torture device called the rack. This. And what he has to say is the following:

“I am not going to give aid to our enemies by disclosing details of our interrogation techniques. But if we do expose detainees to the Rack it is not torture, because we do not torture.”

Well that’s cleared that up then. The quote was from none other than Deranged-Lunatic-in-Chief George Bush and was perhaps the pick of the bunch which I found on this little post here on Brian Leiter’s Law School Reports. It looks like a pretty reputable source – given it’s part of the Law Professor Blogs network one assumes he’d be pulled up pretty sharpish if he was making it up, never mind the implications for his own career.

Reading some of the bald-faced justifications for torture (yes, torture: think witch trials, The Inquisition, The Middle Ages and other such bastions of enlightenment and civilisation) truly is breathtaking. It pretty much puts the current American government slap bang in that Axis of Evil they invented a few years back. ‘The la-and of the freeee, and the home of thuuuh barbaric medieval torturers’ Quite fucking splendid. This makes an interesting read about the equally insane technique of waterboarding.

The comedy of this whole nonsense is that terrorist acts have killed 3000 people in America in the last six years. This works out at an average of about 500 per year, compared to 40 000 deaths per year due to road accidents. 500 per year, versus 40 000 per year. 500 versus 40 000. When, oh when, will they stop hating freedom and start bombing General Motors.

U2 – Daddy’s Gonna Pay For Your Crashed Car
Cracklin’ Moth – Car Wreck
David Bowie – Always Crashing in the Same Car