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I have opined on these pages that the U.S.A. subscribes to such things as the Geneva Convention in an effort to protect our people and not as an effort to look out for our enemies. That being said, we should announce today that beginning tomorrow, the United States Military will reciprocate the treatment provided to our solders by the enemy. Starting tomorrow, we should publicly draw and quarter a dozen Iraqi prisoners in public. Everyday thereafter, we should do the same to another dozen until the bastards who did this to our guys are turned over to the U.S. Army.

Tactics like that didn't work for the SS, and they wouldn't help in Iraq. In fact it would snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. We got Abu Mousad al-Zarqawi because ordinary Iraqis are coming forward with more and more intel on the terrorists all the time. Since then we have staged over 500 raids and killed and captured hundreds of AQ in Iraq. Zarqawi considered their situation bleak precisely because Iraqis are cooperating with the new Iraqi security forces. The sight of "Crusaders" executing Muslims would turn the populace against us and destroy everything our troops have sacrificed to accomplish over the last three years.

Even we in the enlightened West have understood that it is better to be feared than loved. As Indicated above, the entire justification for subscribing to stuff like the Geneva Convention is to protect our soldiers who are POWs. If reciprocity does not work, then we are being naive to continue with the niceties when they are first torturing and then beheading our soldiers.

Some folks will only understand a 2x4 to the head. Our soldiers go to prison for leading their goons around on a dog leash. When they torture and mutilate our soldiers, the other side is rewarded.

We have bent over backwards trying to be nice. As I recall, we got al-Zarqawi because some informant ratted him out under circumstances that did not merit the $25,000,000.00 reward. I don't think for a second that al-Zarqawi got fingered because the informant thought that the USA is full of nice guys.

As nearly as I can tell the previous ruler of Iraq kept a pretty tight lid on things and his soldiers were not tortured or mutilated. I am not suggesting that we need to be like Hussein, but we need to show that we can make life just as miserable for those who would do this sort of thing if we are sufficiently provoked. Disagreeing with us is not sufficient provocation. Torturing and killing POWs is.

Game theory has repeatedly shown that tit for tat is the best way to deal with intransigent factions. If they give us a Twiggy tat, I'm prepared to give them a Dolly Parton tit.