The world is not a nice place, sad to say. Neither diplomacy nor fervent wishing
will change that fact. "W"'s big mistake was in believing that his team was
capable of leading through the back-alleys of the world a nation that is now
both afraid, literally, of it's own shadow, and is also morally obese -- gorged
on too many empty theories which have fattened its ego but have not nourished
its character.

re Abu Ghraib: I do wonder how a prisoner can complain about having been
"humiliated" in some supposedly forbidden manner, unless he was _credibly_
threatened with a far more serious sort of mistreatment (about which no great
revelations are coming to light)? What I mean is, a prisoner cannot be insulted
and demeaned unless he participates, mentally and emotionally, in his own
degradation.

Is it reasonable to call a leash and collar a form of torture? Perhaps a new
paradigm is appropriate to this age. In addition to (if not instead of) loving
those that mistreat us and even take pictures of us without our undies on,
perhaps one simply needs to learn to laugh at them for their childishness.

"Would you also like to view my anus, Monsieur?
And please do not fail to take note of my
raised middle finger."

Of course physical torture is another thing, and rightly condemned, but that
is not what the present flurry seems to be about. We might have shot any of
these individuals on sight, which would not have been condemned in war, and yet
we are excoriated for "humiliating" them. How laughable! Our fault seems to lie
in the fact that we have made prisoners of those too ignorant to understand the
game.

In future we must be careful to capture more intelligent, educated, and
cosmopolitan types: perhaps only the Metro-Sexuals of the Middle East are now to
be considered fair game. Ah, but no, because that would lead us straight back
again to Saudi Arabia.



Jack