Thursday, December 13, 2007

A Loaded Question

Dang it, Drudge! I promised comedy and you made me get all riled up again! Why you always gotta make me hit you?

Actually, this one isn't Drudge's fault. It's just a banner ad. But this ad features a very interesting loaded question:





I'd like to find the source of the ad but I had navigated away from the page and it didn't appear despite refreshing a few times.



Assumption #1: Being committed to human rights, even the rights of terrorists, means that one is "blinded by hate". Dang it - human rights are only for Americans - unless they're from another country or speak a different language or are suspected of something terrible. After all, if they hadn't done anything wrong, they wouldn't have been arrested, would they?



Assumption #2: One must be "full of hate" to recognize "interrogation techniques" as torture. Is waterboarding torture? Let's see what Webster has to say:



Torture
Noun
1. Extreme mental distress.
2. Unbearable physical pain.
3. Intense feelings of suffering; acute mental or physical pain; "an agony of doubt"; "the torments of the damned".
4. The act of distorting something so it seems to mean something it was not intended to mean.
5. The act of torturing someone; "it required unnatural torturing to extract a confession".
Verb
1. Torment emotionally or mentally.
2. Subject to torture.

Hmm. I suppose Assumption #2 is true, providing that the debate is taking place in Bizarro World. Here on Earth, however, it seems that labelling "effective interrogation techniques" as "torture" is correct by definition. So - "full of hate" = "knows how to read a dictionary". Sounds about right.

A dirty terrorist enjoying an "effective interrogation technique" as his brain experiences the sensation of drowning (simulation).

Assumption #3: Every man being detained by U.S. authorities is a proven terrorist (presumably with knowledge that will save an entire city from a bomb, as the favorite example goes).

Assumption #4: "Supporting the rights of terrorists" is somehow a "bad" thing. Isn't "human" rights called "human" rights for a reason?

If I sound angry, it's just the full-of-hate talking.

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