This won't hurt much (fwd)

This Won't Hurt Much
Terry Jones
The Guradian U.K.

Wednesday June 16, 2004

For some time now, I've been trying  to find out where my son goes after
choir practice. He simply refuses to  tell me. He says it's no business of
mine where he goes after choir practice  and it's a free country.

Now it may be a free country, but  if people start going just anywhere
they like after choir practice, goodness  knows whether we'll have a country
left to be free. I mean, he might be  going to anarchist meetings or Islamic
study groups. How do I  know?

The thing is, if people don't say where they're going  after choir
practice, this country is at risk. So I have been applying a  certain amount
of pressure on my son to tell me where he's going. To begin  with I simply
put a bag over his head and chained him to a radiator. But did  that persuade
him? Does the Pope eat kosher?

My wife  had the gall to suggest that I might be going a bit too far. So
I put a bag  over her head and chained her to the radiator. But I still
couldn't persuade  my son to tell me where he goes after choir practice.

I  tried starving him, serving him only cold meals and shaving his facial
hair  off, keeping him in stress positions, not turning his light off,
playing  loud music outside his cell door - all the usual stuff that any
concerned  parent will do to find out where their child is going after choir
practice.  But it was all to no avail.

I hesitated to gravitate to  harsher interrogation methods because, after
all, he is my son. Then Donald  Rumsfeld came to my rescue.

I read in the New York Times  last week that a memo had been prepared for
the defence secretary on March 6  2003. It laid down the strictest guidelines
as to what is and what is not  torture. Because, let's face it, none of us
want to actually torture our  children, in case the police get to hear about
it.

The  March 6 memo, prepared for Mr Rumsfeld explained that what may look
like  torture is not really torture at all. It states that: if someone "knows
that  severe pain will result from his actions, if causing such harm is not
his  objective, he lacks the requisite specific intent even though the
defendant  did not act in good faith".

What this means in  understandable English is that if a parent, in his
anxiety to know where his  son goes after choir practice, does something that
will cause severe pain to  his son, it is only "torture" if the causing
of
that severe pain is his  objective. If his objective is something else - such
as finding out where  his son goes after choir practice - then it is not
torture.

Mr Rumsfeld's memo goes on: "a defendant" (by which he means a  concerned
parent) "is guilty of torture only if he acts with the express  purpose of
inflicting severe pain or suffering on a person within his  control".

Couldn't be clearer. If your intention is to  extract information, you
cannot be accused of torture.

In fact, the report went further. It said, if a parent "has a  good-faith
belief [that] his actions will not result in prolonged mental  harm, he lacks
the mental state necessary for his actions to constitute  torture". So all
you've got to do to avoid accusations of child abuse is to  say that you
didn't think it would cause any lasting harm to the child. Easy  peasy!

I currently have a lot of my son's friends locked up  in the garage, and
I'm applying electrical charges to their genitals and  sexually humiliating
them in order to get them to tell me where my son goes  after choir practice.

Dick Cheney's counsel, David S  Addington, says that's just fine. William
J Haynes, the US defence  department's general counsel, agrees it's just
fine. And so does the US air  force general counsel, Mary Walker.

In fact, practically  everybody in the US administration seems to think
it's just fine, except for  the state department lawyer, William H Taft IV,
who perversely claims that I  might be opening the door to people applying
electrical charges to my  genitals and sexually humiliating me.

So I'm going to round  up all the children in the neighbourhood, chain
them and set dogs on them. I  might accidentally kill one or two - but I
won't have intended to - and  perhaps I'll take some photos of my wife
standing on the dead bodies, and  then I'll show the photos to the other
kids, and finally, perhaps, I might  get to find out where my son goes after
choir practice. After all, I'll only  be doing what the US administration has
been condoning since  9/11.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Terry Jones is a writer, film director, actor in Monty  Python
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