Tuesday, December 13, 2005

Cruel and inhuman?

John McCain is determined to insert a requirement into some legislation which would establish the Army Field Manual as the standard for interrogations of terrorists we capture. It would specifically prohibit cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment of those we capture. This sounds good, but McCain can't explain what it means. He can't specify which of numerous procedures would be affected by his language.Sleep deprivation? Temperature fluctuations? Position stress such as kneeling for long periods? Waterboarding which simulates suffocation? All of these can be considered degrading and cruel by someone. When challenged by Cheney and others, McCain states that if push comes to shove and some extraordinary circumstance warrants the use of deviation from his prohibited practices, the President or anyone below that level should just go ahead and do what is necessary. This is obviously a moral hypocrisy. Absurd. How absurd is shown when one considers a few days ago one of our hellfire missles delivered by an unmanned aircraft killed a fellow named Hamza Rabia in Pakistan. He was an al Qaeda leader in a house with some others. Blown away. Nobody I know objected. What if he had been captured, however. If McCain had his way, we could not even subject him to loud rap music. Everyone knows that would be cruel, but worse than being blown to bits?

I am sorry McCain suffered in a North Vietnam prison, but his concern over terrorists treatment doesn't square with common sense.

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