Tortured Reasoning

A few years ago I read that the sheriff of Maricopa County, AZ made his male inmates wear pink jail outfits. The inmates didn’t like this; instead of being “cool” they were humiliated. Precisely the sheriff’s point. Too many gang-bangers saw jail as a badge of honor. The sheriff re-introduced shame to make jail uncool.

If foreign terrorists, however, were humiliated in Guantanamo, the New York Times, Senator McCain, and Senator Graham would be calling for war crimes tribunals – not against the terrorists, but against their American captors. See, this violates the Geneva Convention on treatment of prisoners of war and recently the Supreme court ruled the U.S must treat unlawful combatants by the Geneva conventions. This had never been a requirement in the past. They ruled this way, not because the treaty states so (it doesn’t) but because Congress did not differentiate between a prisoner of war and an unlawful combatant when it wrote the U.S. code for treating prisoners. President Bush has requested Congress rewrite the code to differentiate between legitimate prisoners of war and illegal non-combatants. Senators McCain, Graham, and the liberal media would have us think George Bush has asked permission to torture prisoners. He has not.

When the Senators and liberal media use the word torture – call them on it. What exactly is it they are calling torture. For most Americans it means cattle prods, paper shredders and similar evils. I find it hard to believe folks will want to go on record saying rock music, uncomfortable temperatures, and pink outfits constitute torture.