Torture's Terrible Toll

[Occhidiangela]

Here's a VERY good read I stumbled across today. I've been following the issue but only today saw the piece written by McCain.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10019179/site/newsweek/

I can't say there's anything there with which I disagree. Whether or no one agrees with his support of the administration's actions in the current war, he respectfully takes issue with the idea of torture as policy.
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There have been about a hundred articles on this "torture" issue lately, most of which I have read. McCain knows what the real deal is, most of the dipsticks who are writing about it don't.

Far too many journalists are confusing "abuse" and "torture" and "mind games." They then seque into "abuse" and the photos of "Abu Graib" without understanding that they are mixing contexts. I was treated worse than a naked dog pile in a training environment. I can't comment on what non-military organizations do, so I won't. The farming out of selected prisoners to regimes with less stringent regulations than America has is an interesting approach, but the risk it carries is abusing both America's image and the desirable moral high ground position, be it true, fabricated as spin, or a bit of both.

Where there are bona fide violations of DoD regulations, which carry the force of law under the category of administrative law enacteed by Congress, then rightly whoever is involved, including the entire chain of command, needs to get hammered.

I note that the general in charge of the Abu Graib unit is still free, and is not in prison. "Oh, she got demoted." Right. Until that is resolved otherwise, the issue is being clouded with a lot of hot air and nonsense. She is hiding behind both her gender and her commission.

The Gitmo matter, regardless of its loopholes and legality under the Constitution, has created an image problem. In a war where image is part of the battle field, which is true for this war for the hearts and minds of the average Arab on the streets of the Mid East, symbols like Gitmo are counterproductive, and thus not part of a winning informatino strategy.

At least Senator McCain speaks from a position of understanding the core issues, and some of the points he has made lately underscore the problems of the questionable reliability of information extracted under duress, as well as the political imperative to hold the moral high ground.

Not a few of the prisoners, in Iraq, Afghanistan, and probably some of the folks in Gitmo, are what Eric Hoffer woudl call "True Believers." When you are dealing with a "True Believer" you are not dealing with an easy to break man. I offer Admiral James Stockdale as a stellar example. If you don't know who he is, look him up. He's a lot more than Ross Perot's running mate in 1992, a whole lot more.

Occhi