Washington Post Jumps the Shark

The Washington Post editors jumped the shark in this editorial. Here's the section that I find most objectionable:

Of course, Mr. Bush didn't come out and say he's lobbying for torture. Instead he refers to "an alternative set of procedures" for interrogation. But the administration no longer conceals what it wants. It wants authorization for the CIA to hide detainees in overseas prisons where even the International Committee of the Red Cross won't have access. It wants permission to interrogate those detainees with abusive practices that in the past have included induced hypothermia and "waterboarding," or simulated drowning. And it wants the right to try such detainees, and perhaps sentence them to death, on the basis of evidence that the defendants cannot see and that may have been extracted during those abusive interrogation sessions.

There is so much hyperbole in that editorial that one wonders if Al Gore didn't write it. Later in the editorial, the editors say "There's no question that the United States is facing a dangerous foe that uses the foulest of methods." Shame on them for characterizing induced hypothermia is torture. Shame on them for saying that waterboarding shouldn't be used. Shame on them for saying that terrorists should get visits from the ICRC. In the past, the people that've been held in secret prisons have been the very people that plotted the 9/11 attacks, the worst of the worst.

It'll be a sub-zero day in the tropics before I'll want our government treating these monsters with kid gloves.

Before you think that I'm only mad at the Washington Post on this, think again. I've got just as much scorn for Mssrs. Warner, McCain and Graham. McCain of all people should know, as Captain Ed points out here:

We have yet to fight against a wartime enemy that followed the GC with any consistency at all. The Germans routinely violated it even before Hitler began issuing orders to shoot captured pilots, and the massacre at Malmedy only crystallized what had been fairly brutal treatment at the hands of the Nazis for American prisoners (the Luftwaffe was one notable exception). The Japanese treatment of POWs was nothing short of barbaric, both before and after Bataan. The same is true for the North Koreans and the Chinese in the Korean War, and McCain himself is a routine example of the kind of treatment our men suffered at the hands of the Vietnamese.

All this handwringing about upholding the GC so that our prisoners will be treated properly is nonsense and Mssrs. Warner, McCain and Graham know it. Or is anyone stupid enough to think that McCain was treated according to the GC?

We always hear that using these techniques "brings us down to their level." Let's examine that. If we're doing everything possible to prevent future terrorist attacks, how is that the same as AQ in Iraq torturing someone because they're Jewish? I'd submit to you that it's foolish to compare the two. When Americans pressure terrorists into giving us information that protects innocent civilians, the objective is totally different than Zarqawi torturing, then killing Nicholas Berg.

When dealing with barbarians like Zarqawi, it's best to have him think that you're more ruthless than he is. Putting the 'fear of God' in a terrorist is a good thing.

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Posted Friday, September 15, 2006 9:30 AM

August 2006 Posts

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