Great to be British, isn't it? Time was, we were really uptight, but now we can talk about anything - sex, religion, politics. No matter how personal and complex the subject, we'll discuss it with Richard and Judy, or slap our private Polaroids of it on our websites. Which leaves me puzzled about our silence, even shyness, over this whole torture thing.
After all, torture has mass appeal - as wacky old Stanley Milgram put it: "A substantial proportion of people do what they are told to do, irrespective of the content of the act and without limitations of conscience, so long as they perceive that the command comes from a legitimate authority." Or, to put it another way, if a man with a white coat or shiny buttons tells you to electrocute someone for the good of your country, or his country, or an unnamed man in Sidcup, you have a 65% chance of flicking the switch and feeling just fine about it.
Torture is simple - amazing results can be achieved with the everyday household objects that any Blue Peter presenter might recommend. And it's really sexy - think of all that painstaking attention to genital areas. Better yet, it's about power - having the power to make somebody into something. The kind of exhilarating stuff you're not supposed to try at home.
Never mind that even Malleus Maleficarum (the original torture manual for the Spanish Inquisition) cautioned that its victims might say anything to make it stop - torture is definitely about truth and about justice springing in a really surprising and frankly rather ill-defined way from unjust and criminal acts, and don't forget, if we don't do it to them, they'll do it to us.
And torture is just so much fun. You'll never, for example, see a perky torturer trying to kick the habit in televised diary clips. "Yesterday was my first night out ... other people were torturing, but I just sucked my lozenge, and this morning I didn't have that terrible smell in my clothes and hair. And I haven't gained weight the way I thought I would .."
Torture doesn't quit - it just moves. Nazis torture the French resisters; the French adapt Nazi techniques in Algeria and Indochina; the Americans adapt French and CIA techniques in Vietnam; coalition forces adapt CIA techniques in Iraq and on and on we go. Having fun.
When quality torturers lose one playground in, say, Chile, or South Africa, they can transfer their specialist skills to, say, Afghanistan, or Iraq. Today's torturers deserve our respect, whether they're innovative freelancers like "Crazy Mike" and Jonathan Idema, or following more conventional chains of command like "Chip" Frederick - they unite dedication and ingenuity with millennia of vicious tradition. They give living meaning to puzzling technical terms like falaqa, bastinado or squassation and they cherish the gritty sense of humour immortalised in witty nicknames any torture enthusiast can appreciate - "the parrot's perch", "the telephone", "the electric grill".
But we have to remember that torture is also as British as the monkeys on Gibraltar. We love it. We tested it throughout our empire, and now we gladly supply the mercenaries, and restraints and devices, that make it really swing. We built delightful torture/rape/concentration camps in Kenya after the second world war; we excelled ourselves in Northern Ireland; we keep Diego Garcia cleared so the US can use it as a tropical paradise/black hole; and now we're pitching in handily in Iraq.
Even more admirably, the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001 means that we can - and do - imprison whomever we like indefinitely. No clear charges, no release date, oppressive conditions: it's a splendidly elegant way of making detainees', [prisoners], own fears torment them with minimal further intervention.
Even more thrillingly, we'll now accept evidence obtained by torture in other regimes - just like our clever pals in the US administration who've also ensured their staff appointments, command structures and on-the-ground levels of alcohol abuse guarantee consistent levels of coalition cruelty.
Most lovely of all is the way we Brits conduct our tortures. Our dawn raids and detentions are so quiet, so nicely contained within the Muslim community. The civilians we are bombing and irradiating as you read this are so far away. Our complicity is so gentle.
Unless maybe a grown man weeps on grainy video, and begs for his life in a hell he didn't make and reminds us: "I am nothing to you." From Downing Street to Whitehall, from prime minister to home secretary, from foreign to domestic policy, this is what our torture says we all believe - that any human being can be nothing. Great to be British, isn't it?
By AL Kennedy 27 October 04
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