Interesting Torture Question

The video was posted to point out King's ridiculous statement that there was no waterboarding at Gitmo when we admitted that we were using waterboarding there over a year ago (during the Bush Administration).



What I think is an interesting question, though, is the question of the Central and South American dictators.

I haven't seen any really convincing evidence about Chavez in particular (though he gets attacked a lot because of his strong and brash political rhetoric), but the use of political prisons in Latin America is a really serious problem.

We spend a lot of time talking about democratic freedom, these inalienable rights that we believe in, but it becomes impossible for the United States government to ensure that they are enforced all over the world.

Even when we try to establish some degree of political freedom in countries, we are often rebutted by the political leadership, which wants to be sure that it can maintain its power.

Now, the government's involvement in Central America has never been as seemingly well intentioned as its involvement in the middle east (whatever people believed about the oil interests, there was certainly some intent of liberating the Iraqis of a dictator and establishing democracy; whether or not it was a good idea is another question).

We have created a lot of these political dictators ourselves, just as we created Saddam. The question is how might the United States government go about rectifying that mistake, if it is possible, though I'm not convinced that it is.

Certainly, there are a lot of issues in Latin America that need to be corrected, and the American government and the American people need to have some consideration for how they're going to be dealt with.

Normally, I make a point of having a solution, but I don't on this issue, because I don't think any government decisions are enforceable. Still, the Latin American situation is worth being aware of and handling, if it becomes possible.