WASHINGTON (UPI)-To emphasize its claim that the systematic torture of prisoners by the United States army and CIA is not really torture, the White House and Pentagon in cooperation with several American toy manufacturers has released a torture kit for US children that will get them started early on using torture.
"We do not really use torture," George W. Bush declared during a press conference in Panama on Monday, in an attempt at denying the self-evident much as Richard Nixon asserted in 1973 that, "I am not a crook."
Bush's questionable statement was in response to a reporter's question about the revelations of a network of secret concentration camps that the Bush administration, the CIA and the Pentagon have created in Afghanistan, Iraq, near Cuba, in eastern Europe and Thailand.
Over 10,000 people are imprisoned and tortured in these camps without charges or rights to a hearing and without representation or a trial. They have simply disappeared without any notification of their families.
Thus, with all of the revelations of their torture policy coming to light, the Bush and Cheney team realized that something had to be done quickly to spin the situation in their favor. So, CIA and Pentagon torturers with their extensive experience at torture quickly created a kiddie torture kit with the cooperation of Mattel and Hasbro and other US toy manufacturers.
The kit is based on the CIA's approved manual of ‘Enhanced Interrogation and Torture Techniques' which allows children to electroshock each other and perform other CIA-approved tortures on their playmates. Dolls and action figures can also be used.
It was over the word "torture" that Bush took issue. "When we torture the enemies of US oil corporation and enemies of the US dollar that isn't really torture. We are just gathering information about where those freedom fighters may be hiding. Anything we do to help grab and steal foreign oil is entirely justified."
Colonel Bull Buntline of the Pentagon was more blunt. "The many cases of US torture such as the hundreds of photographs from Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere that have shocked the entire world were not an aberration, but just the tip of the iceberg," he clarified. "That's why the kiddie torture kit contains many of those photos so our kids can reenact them."
"They are an accurate representation of our systemic torture and the inevitable byproduct of an illegal and immoral war and colonial occupation which we do for Big Oil, much as Israel also does on Palestinian land in its own illegal occupation in order to steal Palestinian land."
"That is why this new kiddie torture kid will be so useful to us," he added. "American kids will now be able to have Barbie torture Ken and vice versa. This will also help militarize American society, make US citizens accept their own torture by the American government, and help boost our military recruitment."
In order to gain support for more US torture and the new kiddie torture kit, VP Dick Cheney took the bold step in October of going to Capitol Hill with CIA Director Porter Goss to pressure senators into exempting the CIA from a proposed amendment that would ban "cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment" of prisoners in US custody. The White House has threatened to veto any measure that endangers its policy of torturing people.
Bush said that he will not grant the Red Cross access to the CIA's gulag and the thousands of "disappeared" being held by America's secret police. And Bush agrees with Cheney; any attempt to turn his verbal disavowal of torture into written law must be quashed.
Recent US opinion polls have found that the US public believe that Bush and Cheney are not only crooks, but also torturers, and the public fears that they will be next up on the rack.
