Heather MacDonald on Torture and "Torture"

Worth a read. She slams St. Andrew of the Sacred "Heart-Ache" along the way, too.

The U.S. military recently uncovered alleged evidence of torture in Iraqi-run Baghdad prisons, including what appeared to be a torture chamber in an Iraqi Ministry of Interior detention facility. The Sunni reaction to these discoveries poses a considerable problem for proponents of the anti-American “torture narrative�: The Sunnis are calling on the U.S. military to correct the situation! “I wish the Americans would go to [the prisons] and find out about it,� former detainee Sadiq Abdul Razzaq Samarrai told the New York Times.

This is bizarre behavior indeed. According to Andrew Sullivan, Seymour Hersh, and other proponents of the “torture narrative,� Americans are the leading sadists in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Cuba. For the Sunnis to ask the Americans to protect them against alleged Shiite abuse would seem to them as delusional as a Jewish prisoner in Auschwitz appealing to Hitler for salvation.

But the Iraqi reaction to the recent torture allegations defies the conventional “torture� wisdom in more ways than one. It turns out that the safest prisons in Iraq are those enjoying regular American oversight. Another former detainee, Amar Sami Samarrai (cousin of Sadiq Abdul), credits his safe treatment to the fact that the Americans had gone through his detention center near Baghdad four times during his 38-day stay, according to the New York Times.

St. Andrew of the Sacred "Heart-Ache" snipes "We led by example, didn't we?"

Apparently he's forgotten the long history of real torture in Iraq -- stuff like acid showers and rape-rooms -- and thinks that torture in the Middle East didn't begin until the subretarded Lyddie England started the game that's sweeping the nation, Naked Arab Jenga.

Thanks to RCL.

posted by Ace at 01:21 PM

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