Jonah Goldberg on the Alberto Gonzales confirmation hearings:
As befits the funhouse logic of such hearings, a number of issues are being confused, conflated and confounded. First of all, most of the things that are being called torture are something a bit shy of torture. Being forced to sit in a cramped area until you give up valuable intelligence is rough, but this ain't beanbag. Being draped with an Israeli flag or even being "waterboarded" - where a detainee's face is surrounded with a wet blanket and he's made to feel like he's drowning isn't torture either. Our own cadets at the Air Force Academy have been water-boarded in training. The war against torture should begin at home!
Second, much of the stuff that does qualify as unacceptable treatment is not condoned by the White House or the Pentagon. The Pentagon is prosecuting the Abu Ghraib offenses, not defending them, and it has always said the Geneva Convention would apply in Iraq.
As for the Geneva Convention and al Qaeda, you'd have to be higher than a moonbat to treat them as signatories to it. Everything they do is a violation of the convention. It may be fun to mug for the cameras and criticize Gonzales for saying that the Geneva Convention is "outdated" when it comes to al Qaeda. But unless you think Khaleed Sheikh Mohammed deserves an allowance in Swiss francs that he can spend at the local canteen, you have to concede Gonzales is right.
For excellent insight into how our military interrogators actually handle their job, as opposed to how the Democrats imagine them to be handling it, this outstanding article by Heather Mac Donald in City Journal is a must read. Mac Donald gives us the most thorough and interesting account of the American use (or non-use) of torture in the WOT. It's a lengthy piece, but well-worth the read.
For our part it is astonishing that we claim to be engaged in a life and death struggle against terrorists, but act as if we're playing a child's game, punctiliously observing rules designed to insure that we lose. The article will make you wonder how serious the paper-pushers in the Pentagon really are about protecting American lives.