On May 24th, The Smoking Gun "broke" a story about the Pentagon releasing captured documents from an al Qaeda torture house in Iraq. The documents included "an assortment of crude drawings" depicting eye-gouging, flesh-drilling, and amputation with a cleaver. The documents also included photographs of torture weapons.
The story, penned by Matt Drudge, was well-nigh ignored everywhere else. Rightwing blogs (and, boy, do I mean rightwing!) such as The Belmont Club and Don Surber picked up the story and screamed that the failure of the mainstream media to cover it once again pointed to a liberal bias.
Now, before I go any farther, let me make one thing clear: I have no doubt 
that al Qaeda tortures. It is a brutal, criminal, murderous organization that ought to turn the stomach of all people who value human life even a little bit. Anyone who tries to whitewash al Qaeda is crazy.Having said that, however, the al Qaeda "documents" in question are...well, questionable. The "torture instruments" look like household tools. And what bozo would go to the trouble of drawing how-to guides to eye-gouging and hand-drilling? Are al Qaeda torturers really so stupid that they need someone to draw them a picture?
What makes the whole story even fishier is that a search of the DOD website failed to turn up any mention of the documents.
In short, this story comes across as bullshit. If it is, shame on the clowns who dreamed it up. Torture is enough of an abomination without pimping it out of juvenile my-country-uber-alles motives.
torture, human rights, terrorism
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