Priorities, priorities

14 May 2004

Excerpt from an article in today’s Boston Globe:

Interrogation rules issued last year in Iraq are “not humane,” a ranking defense official conceded yesterday, and a top general told senators that they may violate the Geneva Conventions on proper handling of military detainees.

…

[A memorandum by the senior American commander in Iraq] listed a variety of methods soldiers could use in interrogations, including “dietary manipulation,” or depriving inmates of food for certain periods so long as they were monitored by a medical officer; changing their environment, such as from hot to cold; keeping inmates awake for as long as three days at a time; isolating them for up to 30 days; using military dogs to intimidate prisoners; or forcing them to assume “stressful positions” for as long as 45 minutes.

But you bleeding-heart liberals have to understand—Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, and when we caught his henchmen, they wouldn’t tell us where they were! Obviously, in order to get this information that’s so critical to America’s national security, torturing an inmate is morally justified…

• Later: An analogy you don’t see every day
• Earlier: The worst punishment