Thank God Our Leaders Are Completely Different From Leonid Brezhnev

I've been busy with actual work, and will likely be for a while longer. Very sad. Still, I have time to follow our descent into barbarism, which I'm pleased to see is proceeding according to schedule.

For instance, take these excerpts from two op-eds from the Washington Post and Los Angeles Times. One is by someone tortured by the U.S., while the other is by someone tortured by the Soviet Union. Because of God's ironic sense of humor, both were published on the same day, last Sunday.

See if you can spot the telltale similarities!

Contestant #1:

I went on a hunger strike demanding a defense lawyer of my choice... To break me down, they started force-feeding me in a very unusual manner -- through my nostrils. About a dozen guards led me from my cell to the medical unit. There they straitjacketed me, tied me to a bed, and sat on my legs so that I would not jerk. The others held my shoulders and my head while a doctor was pushing the feeding tube into my nostril...

And Contestant #2:

I was beaten again and left in a small, dirty, cold concrete cell. I was extremely thirsty, but there was only a bottle of putrid water in the cell... The following night my interrogations began. They asked me if I knew why I had been detained. I said I did not...

In desperation, I began a hunger strike. After 27 days without food, I was taken to meet [...] the prison director and another man, referred to as "the Boss." I pleaded with them to release me or bring me before a court, but the prison director replied that he could not release me...

After 37 days without food, I was dragged to the interrogation room, where a feeding tube was forced through my nose into my stomach. I became extremely ill, suffering the worst pain of my life.

Having trouble seeing the overlap between the two? Here's a tip: both of the authors hate freedom.

If you're one of those pro-terrorist, anti-freedom zealots who have long bedeviled the U.S. and Soviet Union, you might wish to read both columns yourself. One was by Khaled El-Masri, while the other was by Vladimir Bukovsky.