Pentagon officials would not comment on the details of the allegations. Lt. Cmdr. Alvin Plexico issued a Defense Department statement in response to questions, saying that the military was providing a "safe, humane and professional detention operation at Guantánamo that is providing valuable information in the war on terrorism.''

The statement said: "Guantánamo guards provide an environment that is stable, secure, safe and humane. And it is that environment that sets the conditions for interrogators to work successfully and to gain valuable information from detainees because they have built a relationship of trust, not fear.'

Lt.Cmdr Plexico then broke into laughter, and continued "aw, who am I kidding? I couldn't even say that with a straight face! Of course we're doing all those things, but y'all can't do anything about them, because we're armed to the teeth and you're all a bunch of pussies caring about human rights and all."

Noticeably livid with laughter, he stopped to try to control himself, and finally continued, amidst intermittent bouts of giggles: "Look, bottom line: we do what we want, to defend freedom and democracy, so that our children can sleep safely at night, so that we can all be free citizens with the right to life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness. You know, so that we all have access to freedom of the press, the right to a fair and speedy trial, all that stuff. Freedom of religion, the works."

And then Plexico left the room, ending the meeting by saying "now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go and strap one of these towelheads to a chair and play Limp Bizkit at max volume right into his ears until they bleed."
(NY Times, Oct. 17th)

Ok, so I made up the last three paragraphs.

[Update: Teresa Nielsen Hayden has an excellent essay on "extraordinary rendition" (a euphemism for outsourcing torture to other states less bothered by such things as human rights) which considers the moral and practical sides of torture as it relates to civil rights. It's very, very good.]