CIA: Steel Cage Interrogation OK

General Michael V. Hayden, Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) announced today that the enhanced interrogation technique called Steel Cage Interrogation was not torture. Steel Cage Interrogation can continue to be used in all CIA intelligence gathering activities.

Modeled after the steel cage wrestling matches of the World Wrestling Federation (WWF) the interrogation technique has few rules. Interrogators can lift their subjects and drop them on their backs and heads, throw them onto folding tables or ladders, or can beat with chairs and garbage pails. They can also gouge their eyes, kick them in the face, head, back and groin, twisth their arms and legs, and smash them with their forearms, but not closed fists.

To ensure that subjects are not unduly abused, Steel Cage Interrogations are supervised by referees who are selected for high levels of inattention and distractibility. If an interrogator violates one of the rules of Steel Cage Interrogation—for example by choking a subject—the referee can insist that the interrogator stop choking within thirty seconds providing that the referee happens to notice what’s going on right in front of him. Failure to pay attention to a referee’s instructions can result in the interrogator forfeiting interrogation rights and the subject being allowed to keep his secrets.

“Steel Cage Interrogation has been a powerful tool in what we like to call ‘the arsenal of democracy,’ whenever we try to fool gullible citizens by applying lofty terms to brutal practices,” said a CIA spokesperson. “SCI is not torture. If it were, it would not be on television.”

Bush: "Water boarding not that bad"

Determined to answer administration critics, President George W. Bush has allowed himself to be subjected to the "enhanced interrogation technique" called water boarding. The technique, which according to Republican candidate John McCain was developed during the Spanish Inquisition, (see story) has been criticized as a form of torture.

"It's not all that bad," said Bush, after a two hour water boarding session with CIA experts in which Bush revealed: the names of the individuals that his father had bribed to get him into the National Guard during the Viet Nam war; how the missing records of his military service had been stolen and where they were hidden now; how had conspired with his brother Jeb to falsify electoral records in Florida; the location of a secret plan, created by Dick Cheney in 2000 to invade Iraq; and the name of his three current mistresses.

According to Don Sutton, head of the CIA's Directorate of Enhanced Interrogation (DIE) all of the information revealed by Bush has been confirmed and the relevant documents have been returned to their hiding places. "Without water boarding we might have had to use old-fashioned interrogation techniques involving the use of pliers and cattle prods on parts of the body that I won't mention in a family blog like this. Water boarding is a humanitarian alternative, and definitely not torture."

"I'm very happy that I got to experience water boarding," said Bush. "It's definitely not torture. It's a kind of therapy. I feel a lot better now that I've gotten all those things off my chest and I look forward to helping both Al-Qaeda operatives and innocent Iraqis feel as good as I feel today.