Tuck Them In, Turn Off The Lights

While the NYT's front page rails against dissin' the Koran, Bob Herbert holds forth on the Editorial page about using psychology to get information from people who would kill our children:

A recent report from [Cambridge, MA-based] Physicians for Human Rights is the first to comprehensively examine the use of psychological torture by Americans against detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The employment of psychological torture, the report says, was a direct result of decisions developed by civilian and military leaders to "take the gloves off" during interrogations and "break" prisoners through the use of techniques like "sensory deprivation, isolation, sleep deprivation, forced nudity, the use of military working dogs to instill fear, cultural and sexual humiliation, mock executions, and the threat of violence or death toward detainees or their loved ones."

"Although the evidence is far from complete," the report says, "what is known warrants the inference that psychological torture was central to the interrogation process and reinforced through conditions of confinement."

Note Herbert uses the phrase "psychological torture." What is that? He lists sensory deprivation (dark rooms), isolation, sleep deprivation, forced nudity, fear and threats. This is torture? From Tehran to Maputo, tyrants are getting a chuckle out of that.

What are we supposed to do with these guys? We can't touch them, we must carefully respect their religion (the very thing that drives them to terrorism!), and we can't cause them any physical or psychological discomfort.

What's left? It seems that all that the Left would leave is with is sending mommy over to tuck them in and whisper, "Honey, if you feel like it, you might want to tell the nice man why you want to destroy his country."

Making his GOP-bashing personal, Herbert continues:

Warfare, when absolutely unavoidable, is one thing. But it's a little difficult to understand how these kinds of profoundly dehumanizing practices - not to mention the physical torture we've heard so much about - could be enthusiastically embraced by a government headed by men who think all life is sacred. Either I'm missing something, or President Bush, Tom DeLay and their ilk are fashioning whole new zones of hypocrisy for Americans to inhabit.

Pointing an AK47 at a US soldier is a dehumanizing effort. Making someone embarassed or uncomfortable is not physical torture. There is a difference between an innocent embryonic human being and a terrorist picked up in the battlefield with a rifle in his hands.

Sorry, Bob. I see a hypocrite, but it's not Bush or DeLay.