TORTURE
     
 


     The Oblivion Seekers are also strongly opposed to any relaxation of the laws against torture, 
     or to its de facto authorization in any other manner.  These laws are the only way to ensure that 
     individuals who are actually in a position to employ abusive techniques will face the certain threat 
     of legal sanction if they do so, which should act to discourage said individuals from engaging in 
     torture except in the rarest of circumstances, such as an imminent and genuine national security threat . . . 
     Or when some son-of-a-bitch really has it coming . . .

     As the last act of the 1960s, Richard Nixon has to be the biggest booby prize in American history.  
     He was an incorrigible small-timer who celebrated his re-election landslide by simultaneously 
     carpet-bombing Hanoi and designing gaudy new comic-opera uniforms for the White House honor guard.  
     He settled into his second term scowling at an enemies list and talking like a tough guy.   
     World statesman, my ass - he was acting like the lead gaucho in some penny-ante coup d'etat.
     Time's up, loser.

     We caught him and we crucified him.  We maimed him beyond recognition, and we took our time.  
     We savored each new day as it came, and every fresh agony that he suffered was more delicious 
     than the one before.  We turned him slowly on a red-hot spit for 2 years, until he was blistered 
     and peeling, and the sweet aroma of his charred flesh drifted on the breeze.  We snapped out straight 
     razors and sliced his skin away in long thin strips as he kept trying to smile for the cameras.  
     We irrigated his bleeding lacerations with vinegar and urine and salt while he sobbed for mercy and 
     begged us to stop, and then we rubbed him down with sandpaper and steel wool until finally, at the end, 
     his sanity fled, and he howled at us like a caged dog flailing in his own madness and shit, and it was great!  
     It was the best!!  
     Who's next?!!    

     Hmmm.
     What was I saying?