[PISANO]

Rush is dead wrong about this IMHO.

I respectfully disagree. The media is going apoplectic about Iraqi prisoner degradation and humiliation EQUATING it to SADDAM'S systematic torture of the Iraqi people. That VERY question was framed in exact terms equating our troops to Saddam, today by a reporter to the SECDEF. What our troops did to those prisoners was NOT TORTURE.

He is also accurate in depicting the media's reaction to TAILHOOK vs. it's reaction to WACO. The hatred of our military and of the GOP is quite obvious even to a casual observer.

[TN4Liberty]

I agree with you. Based on what I have seen, prisoners were degraded, humiliated... i.e., attempts were made to "break" them. Isn't this exactly what we expect of our intelligence community? We don't torture for information, but is embarrassment better or worse than sleep deprivation confusion activities?

Either way, it is a long shot from throwing people in plastic shredders, isn't it?

Now, I do think that if these "humiliation" activities took place, they should have had a reason or a purpose. If some soldiers did it for kicks, that would be a different matter. But it is was part of a controlled method to demoralize a prisoner for purposes of getting information, can we say it was a bad thing?

This assumes, of course, that no physical torture occurred.