It All Depends On Who's Doing the Torturing

This is not to say that either the conduct of war, or the prevailing attitude towards it, has become less bloodthirsty or more chivalrous...reprisals against prisoners which extend even to torture and murder are looked upon as normal, and, when they are committed by one's own side and not by the enemy, meritorious.

A wingnut acquaintance of mine recently sent me an e-mail with a recap of his son's little league baseball game and the following views regarding Abu Ghraib, the Geneva Conventions and his perception of the reaction of Americans to the Pentagon's flouting of international law.

Our head coach is a former AAA pro pitcher and is way too intense. We lost miserably in our last game with a variety of mental and physical errors, and it was a source of great anguish to our head coach as he dislikes the opposing coach. Finally, he turned to the assistant coaches in dismay and said, "This is so humiliating I'd rather they strip us naked and make us play twister".

What the Northeast liberal establishment doesn't appreciate is that he meant it. Despite all the fancy quoting of miltary regs and Geneva convention rules, most Americans don't care.

We hope Military Intelligence uses strong tactics.

We feel the Geneva Convention should have been renounced long ago. We lost young men to the Japanese, in Korea, in Vietnam and in the mideast while we were abiding by rules they ignore. Be done with it.

We believe Rumsfeld should ignore Abu Ghraib rather than grovel to the leftist media. Do you think Ike or the Secdef wasted their time on the atrocities of WWII? I certainly hope they left them to the internal affairs division of the military while they concentrated on other matters, such as, killing the enemy.

As for the concern that we now appear no different than the opposition, or that the publication of these photos weakens our stature in the hearts and minds of the Iraqi's -let them fret. The rest of America doesn't need any help determining whose moral compass is pointing North. If the Iraqis can't figure it out, it is not because of cultural differences, it is because they are wrong. Zarqawi only punctuated what we already knew.

Please feel free now to accuse me of dragging down America and its institutions as you march out of the room with Bluto and the rest of the Delta brothers.

Forget the german shepherds, the beatings and dead detainees - it's just a game of naked twister.

He is unfortunately representative of the other wingnuts I know. But as the polls confirm, he knows little of how Americans really feel about the Abu Ghraib scandal.