Firstly, what is torture? Well, how about a bit of historical perspective?

“In 1947, the U.S. sentenced a Japanese military officer, Yukio Asano, to 15 years of hard labor for using a form of water-boarding,” Maureen Byrnes, Executive Director of Human Rights First, said.

60 years ago water-boarding was considered torture and a punishable offense as a war crime. That’s a fact.

So what do we say to the people who say that “it was a different time”, and that we are now living under different circumstances. Is that to say that sometimes it’s OKAY to torture someone? Are we to consider the offense first, before determining that water-boarding is acceptable? Or are we to assume the position that the end, in this case, justifies the means?

I say no. I say water-boarding is wrong and will always be wrong.

Today it was found online — The torture memo (PDF) that George W. Bush himself signed. I believe this is the infamous torture memo that John Woo authored. The National Lawyers guild wants Woo fired from his post at the Berkeley Law School because of this memo.

ABC News aired a segment on their daily news show that after a five month investigation, they could say that Bush’s most senior officials not only knew about the torture they were inflicting on suspected terrorists, but decided down to the last detail exactly how much torture to inflict.

Some say republicans are turning back the clock on human rights by 60 years. I say this is partly true. I think many democrats are also complicit in this.

We private citizens haven’t done enough to try to stop this bullshit from happening. Why aren’t we in the streets. Why aren’t we on the white house lawn with signs crying foul? Why has apathy taken over as if it were a disease?