When Amanda IM’d me a link to (via the Guardian) Mother Jones‘ playlist of songs used to torture terrorism detainees, I was pretty well set to post something along the lines of LOL Drowning Pool, Eminem and the Meow Mix commercial… But I’ve spent years covering torture, and I spent this morning writing about it, and it’s just not fucking funny.

We aren’t talking about detainees hearing some Backstreet Boys song over and over. Detainees at Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere have extremely loud noises at extremely close proximity blared into their ear drums for hours on end. The point isn’t to annoy someone. It’s to bombard his senses with physical pain and psychological disorientation. The choice of song is only relevant in that it reveals a juvenile and vindictive impulse within the torturer. "Fuck Your God" by Deicide was clearly chosen by someone too stupid to know that Mohamed Atta’s God is also the torturer’s God. "White America" by Eminem speaks for itself.

These are people’s lives. They are not an iPod shuffle. These men were tortured to the point that they try to kill themselves. I’m an extremely profane and inappropriate person and this is not fucking funny.