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AND MUCH MORE!

"There was some-
thing truly visceral about Cube's voice that made his ever-present snarl that much more serious. As he barked on Death Certificate and Amerikkka's, he was the nigga you love to hate as well as the wrong one to fuck with."

by Ross Levine

So you wanna torture an Iraqi?

And you think the best way to do that is put a leash around his neck and walk the doggy? Or throw a hood over his head, wire up his fingers and turn him into a terrorist scarecrow? Or make him and his buddies strip and play an intense game of homo Twister?

Get real.

If you want to torture Iraqis, you're going to have to be more inventive than that. That's not even torture, it's mere abuse. You want torture, you must be imaginative. If Paul Simon could think of 50 ways to leave his lover, you can surely imagine 25 ways to torture an Iraqi prisoner. Start here:

God bless America! And its sweatshop monolith! (Photo: Reuters/Larry Downing)

1) Make him drive to Syria for affordable drugs
2) Shoot a little mercury into his lungs
3) Slash his health coverage and make him pay more for it
4) Enslave his kids and their kids to the national debt
5) Place him in the ocean, his nose just above water, then warm up the globe a little

6) Disguise him as a duck and send him to the country with Cheney and Scalia
7) Have him slalom test a Ford Excursion
8) Smack him with a Bible while repeating, "My book's better than your book!"
9) Promise him a tax break -- but only if he ups his income by $200,000
10) Stick him in the New Jersey foster care system

11) Retire him and cut his social security
12) Tie him up in Yellowstone and run snowmobiles over him
13) Plug him with lead -- i.e., pour him a glass of D.C. tap water
14) Get Michael Jackson's plastic surgeon to open his nasal passages
15) Lock him in Wal-Mart overnight

16) Stick an endoscope up his rectum while saying, "Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be here somewhere"
17) Promise him freedom as soon as there are hydrogen cars on Mars
18) Take him out for fast food every day for a month
19) Beat him to a pulp and if you kill him. So what? He's not a fetus
20) Force him to take out an $800,000 mortgage, then have Greenspan hike his interest rate

This is not the movie Mel Gibson had in mind. (Photo: Washington Post)

21) Transport him to Nevada in a boxcar full of nuclear waste
22) Make him walk through the Sonoran Desert, then pick your vegetables
23) Expose him to a wardrobe malfunction from Dr. Laura
24) Strip him naked and drape a curtain over him while John Ashcroft sings "Let the Eagles Soar"
25) Dress him in a U.S. Army uniform, put him in a Humvee and send him home

You see, we Americans know more about torture than we like to let on. And it's about time we put our knowledge to good use in the War on Terror.

01 June 04

Top Films of 2003 In a year that brought us an intractable global war, the darkly personal film shined just as brightly as its big-ticket counterparts. And whether the subject was cocaine, the Columbine massacre, zombie rampages or marriages on the brink in Japan, there was simply nowhere to run to, baby, nowhere to hide . . . MORE	"Using Language Against Itself" With one foot in the art world and another outside of it, guerilla poster artist Robbie Conal is assuming the position. After all, taking garish potshots at Important White Men won't exactly make your friends in the echelons of power. But Robbie just wants them to feel the Burn. Our interview explains . . . . MORE	Year of the Fake Look back in anger, indeed. In the so-called greatest country on god's green earth, justice went blindly after bong makers, almanac readers and whistle-blowers while ignoring the liars, cheaters and swindlers. So where did that leave the truth, in all its ugly glory? In the gutter, where Bush likes it. Honesty has left the building . . . MORE
American Apocalypse Postmodernity in action can be a confusing thing. Catastrophe and cyberculture are just around the corner while gossip and trash haunt the hallways. And no one splices it like found footage virtuoso Craig Baldwin. Take a trip to his Spectres of the Spectrum before it's too late . . . MORE	"It Should Be Cool to Care" Call them electro, call them post-rock, call them whatever the hell you want. Just don't call D.C.'s own Trans Am a boring interview. Because they're taking dead aim at Liberation in 2004, and that means no Bush, no Atkins diet, and especially no Friendster . . . MORE	Thumbs Up! Abu Ghraib? Horrible. Nick Berg? Barbaric. Donald Rumsfeld? Employee of the Month! After everything that's happened in the war and its aftermath, Dubya still loves him some Rummy . . . . . MORE