Just How Many Testicles Have Been Crushed In My Name?

Standard caveat:  This will be a relatively short diary.

This memo to Alberto Gonzales was drafted by Deputy Assistant Attorney General, John Yoo, in order to pave the way for the United States to torture brown people, in order to scare white people into voting for republicans.

In speaking about the now infamous memo, Yoo once told an interviewer this gem:

Cassel: If the President deems that he’s got to torture somebody, including by crushing the testicles of the person's child, there is no law that can stop him?

Yoo: No treaty.

Cassel: Also no law by Congress. That is what you wrote in the August 2002 memo.

Yoo: I think it depends on why the President thinks he needs to do that.

I know what you're thinking.  Surely, no one actually followed the advice of our esteemed Deputy Assistant Attorney General, right?  

Well, follow me over the fold, if you've got the balls to handle the truth, that is.  

So, you saw the intro and thought to yourself:

We don't really crush testicles on behalf of the citizens of the United States of America, do we?

Well, I'm sorry to say you are wrong.  

It does appear that testicles are being crushed in your name, and mine.  Per the  Independent

Clive Stafford-Smith, the legal director of Reprieve representing Mr Mohammed, said that he also knows the identity of the agents who were present when his client was allegedly beaten and tortured. Writing to Mr Miliband, he said: "Given the opportunity, we can prove that the evidence was the fruit of torture. Indeed, we can prove that a photographic record was made of this by the CIA. Through diligent investigation we know when the CIA took pictures of Mr Mohammed's brutalised genitalia, we know the identity of the CIA agents who were present including the person who took the pictures (we know both their false identities and their true names), and we know what those pictures show."

They say a picture is worth a thousand words.  As of right now, I can't imagine what a picture of genetalia brutalized in my name would look like.  Would it be bruised?  Cut?  Smashed?

As they say, this is just another example of:

Your tax dollars at work.

Remember when you cash that paycheck this Friday that a portion of your hard earned dollars went to brutalize Mr. Mohammed's testicles.  

Or, look at the bright side.  It does not appear that they crushed the testicles of Mr. Mohammed's son, which is what Mr. Yoo actually authorized in our name.  See, its not so bad as those whacky liberals make it out to be!

UPDATE:  Then again, perhaps we have crushed his son's testicles.

Per the UK Telegraph:

Two young sons of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the suspected mastermind of the September 11 attacks, are being used by the CIA to force their father to talk.

Yousef al-Khalid, nine, and his brother, Abed al-Khalid, seven, were taken into custody in Pakistan last September when intelligence officers raided a flat in Karachi where their father had been hiding.

He fled just hours before the raid but his two young sons, along with another senior al-Qa'eda member, were found cowering behind a wardrobe in the apartment.

The boys have been held by the Pakistani authorities but this weekend they were flown to America where they will be questioned about their father.

Last night CIA interrogators confirmed that the boys were staying at a secret address where they were being encouraged to talk about their father's activities.

(snip)

Their father, Mohammed, 37, is being interrogated at the Bagram US military base in Afghanistan. He is being held in solitary confinement and subjected to "stress and duress"-style interrogation techniques.

He has been told that his sons are being held and he is being encouraged to divulge future attacks against the West and talk about the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden.

"He has said very little so far," one CIA official said yesterday. "He sits in a trance-like state and recites verses from the Koran. But while he may claim to be a devout Muslim, we know he is fond of the Western-style fast life.

"His sons are important to him. The promise of their release and their return to Pakistan may be the psychological lever we need to break him."

(snip)

Little is known of his sons' mother, who is thought to be Pakistani. "We have no evidence that suggests she has anything to do with al-Qa'eda," a Pakistani intelligence source said yesterday.

"All we know is that she is the sister of an al-Qa'eda member that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed met at a Pakistan college, the University of Dawa al Jihad, in the late 1980s."

(snip)

UPDATE No. 2:  Clarification.  The Mohammed whose testicles were brutalized was not Khalid Sheik Mohammed, while the children in custody are Khalid Sheik Mohammed's sons.  As of the date and time of the writing of this update, the status of the testicles of Khalid Sheik Mohammed and his sons are uncertain.