Y'all Torture Me Home.(The Talk of the Town)(washboarding of prisoners)

I was overjoyed that Congress refused to override President Bush's veto of a bill outlawing the washboarding of prisoners, a technique that some have described as torture--a ridiculous notion if I've ever heard one. We're involved in a war here, people, with some very nasty individuals who would like nothing better than to kill us, and the idea that washboarding--an ancient technique, used routinely in many cultures around the world--is somehow cruel and unusual shows just how infantile this discussion has become.

People have been washboarded for centuries. It's almost as if the urge to washboard is intrinsically human. Is it pretty? No. Does it work? It appears to. So what's the big deal? If we're going to be in this thing, let's win this thing. I myself have been washboarded. It's true. I used to live downstairs from an oldtime jug band. And, believe me, it was not torture. It was torturous, yes--especially at three in the morning, what with the banjo and the jug and the high, whiny singing and (horror of horrors) the occasional harmonica--but torture?

Please.

Was it annoying? Yes, it was. Was it maddening? It was to me. Did it disgust with its ostentatious "embracing" of the faux nostalgic? Oh, big-time.

But was it torture?

At this time, I would like to decline to say. I do not want to give our enemies aid and . . . and that other thing we're not supposed to give them. Comfort stations. I would like to deny our enemies comfort stations.

Huh.