The World O' Crap Archive

Welcome to the Collected World O' Crap, a comprehensive library of posts from the original Salon Blog, and our successor site, world-o-crap.com (2006 to 2010).

Current posts can be found here.

Friday, January 14, 2011

January 7, 2005 by s.z.


True Love Waits and Waits and Waits ...


We recently received the following email taking exception to our report concerning Coach Joe White's Pure Excitement.  Although critical of our efforts, we believe this communication is worthy of sharing with the world because it presents a viewpoint often ignored by the media: that of a sincere, devout, abstinent 28-year-old male named "Clete."  We think you will find it edifying.
*****

Dear World O' Crap:

I visit your site more often than I should -- not because I am a Liberal or a life-hating degenerate, but out of the same helpless, sad compulsion that prevents me from looking away on a warm summer's night as insect after mindless insect seeks out, and then receives, the crackling blue-neon embrace of my patio Bug Zapper. It pains me, as a Christian, to sense the unabashed delight with which you deliver your "glib" rejoinders, "witty"reductios and "world-weary" libels against writers whose only "sin" is their fierce desire to elevate and ennoble our experience on this earth, rather than celebrate its pernicious enfeeblement and decline, as you (and, I assume, your readers) take such apparent glee in doing. And while I know it is very un-Christian of me, I find I cannot suppress a mental image of you and Dorothy Parker and -- Heck, let's make it a threesome! -- Susan Sontag shackled to one another in a scalding hell-pit, shrieking pithy bon mots at one another and blithely debating the relative merits of "spitting" versus "swallowing" as your lips retract like shriveled apple-skins and your dental fillings bubble to vapor and splash against your swollen, blistered tongues. I take no joy in that image, but it is one that I hope you will ponder and reflect upon. Like you, the oh-so-clever Ms. Parker paid no heed to the price that God would ultimately extract for her immoral self-indulgences and blasphemous "whimsies." (Neither, alas, did Harpo -- but that's another, darker story.)

By way of introduction: I am a 28-year-old abstinent virgin male. (Laugh if you must, as I know you will. "For the laughter of the wicked is as a knife that cleaves its own blade, and the capering of cloven hooves shall not overspread the footpath of the Righteous.") Since my "sexual awakening" at the age of 13, I have battled both the feral impulses of my own body and the corrosive social forces that encourage conformity to a "just-do-it" philosophy of thoughtless gratification while relentlessly promoting "sex" with "others" as an "act" to be "enjoyed." Although I have succeeded in preserving the "unstained gift" which I will one day offer up, proudly, like a flawless gem, to the woman I marry, it has been a lonely and difficult path -- and one that I could have walked with much greater confidence and certainty had I been able to turn to Mr. White's exemplary book "Pure Excitement" as a companion and guide. ("For behold: That which is light in the one hand is heavy in the other. And the load of the teacher in time makes glad the student's mouth."
)

I admit that I was initially put off when I came across Mr. White's book -- but only because my eyes (which have been weakened by daily and 
st
renuous exertions to enforce my own personal "virtue-zone") misread the title, quite innocently, as "Pure Excrement." Once I began reading, however, I was hooked. Here was a book that not only spoke to me, but actually seemed to be written about me. And not just a sterile text-book or a compilation of well-intended, stale pieties, but an authentic, human voice bringing real-world people and challenges to immediacy and life. This is the kind of book that makes you bolt up in your chair and say "Yes! Yes! I KNOW what you're saying!" -- and does so in an engaging, "Hey-look-at-me-when-I'm-talking-to-you-fella" style which is, in its most intimate and gut-kicking passages, a heady distillation of Sam Spade, Lester Dent and Shlomo Raven at their peerless best. White writes, if you will forgive a culinary comparison, like a fine French chef cuts cheese.

I recognize that spirituality, to your mind, is a pre-rational "relic" on the order of menstrual tents and the Macintosh "Lisa." And I can only assume from your casual mockery of White's God-affirming stance on self-denial that you are, might we put it delicately, the sort of woman who has gripped any number of nameless consorts between her tautening haunches and run them breathless and exhausted to ground with the single-minded determination of a Mongol rider astride a bucking, wind-spirited pony of the Steppes. One can only hope that your many tainted memories -- memories, one assumes, of steam rising in curling arabesques from a tangle of naked, heaving flesh in the muted light of a gentle, afternoon rain; observed (indistinctly, not as separate bodies but a single urgent, quickening motion) by strangers in a passing tram -- will comfort you on the fateful night you serve up to your chosen mate-for-life, not the pure, sweet draught of your oak-barreled-and-aged love, but a disappointing "Coke-without-a-fizz."

However, that is neither here nor there. (
"For that is neither here nor there.") I can attest from my own experience that what White presents is the honest truth, and a truth that desperately needs to be assimilated by every individual who -- unlike yourself and your readers -- values virginity over hedonistic, jet-propelled self-pollution. For example, in Chapter 2 (which you curiously neglected to assail, perhaps because it admits of no rebuttal), White relates the story of a teen-ager named Jason, whose feckless and misguided father gave him a condom on his 15th birthday, thus encouraging promiscuity and nearly destroying the young man's life. That tale resonated with me, because I, too, had a father who confused "permission" with "guidance." I still shudder when I recall his drunken "re-imagining" of the Ten Commandments following a bitter confrontation with my then-mother. "Kid," he slurred, "The Bible says 'Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife, nor thy neighbor's ass.' But it doesn't say fuck-all about 'thy neighbor's wife's ass.'" Much later, on his deathbed -- when I hoped I might finally persuade him to accept Christ into his heart -- he pulled himself off the bed by my shoulders, shaking with pain, and whispered the words that are still seared into my soul: "Boy or girl, it don't matter, son. Roll 'em over on their bellies and they're all women." You, least of all, can imagine the impact such careless words might have on an impressionable young mind.

In any event, I have no doubt you will make light of all this, as you do anything of value and permanence. (BTW: You might want to ask your dentist about those new polymer fillings, Gehenna-Girl!)

But let me leave you with a challenge: Inspired by White's book, I have written two of my own which I hope might both complement and extend his wide-ranging insights. The first -- intended as a "user's manual for virginity" with a hip, contemporary youth audience in mind -- is titled "Palm Pilot,"
 and draws heavily on stratagems and techniques for "virtue-building" which I have developed and perfected through years of painstaking trial-and-error. The second -- which might be more up your alley, Thunder-Thighs -- addresses the special needs of  those who, by choice or circumstance, find themselves pursuing abstinence as a lifestyle well beyond their teens and 20s, and frequently into late middle age or beyond. Recognizing that these "Winter Warriors" already have self-denial down to a science, I offer them instead a thought-provoking stew of guided meditations, word-association games, "body discovery workouts" and adult-aligned "structured visualization" exercises designed to help them productively channel and redirect the "stored purity" that longs, impatiently but less-and-less hopefully, to be showered on some deserving "other." That book will be available online at the end of March under the title "Stainless Steel."   

I will comp you on both of these tomes, in the hope that you and your little gaggle of hellbound companions will "do your worst" to find a single assertion that can be refuted on the basis of logic and reason, rather than childish insults. Thus barred from recourse to the hoots and catcalls that pass for argument on this site, I fear even you may be forced to concede that devoting one's life to being an uptight, sexless mannequin may not be as "loony" a notion as you thought.


"That which is stainless cannot be soiled, and that which resisteth dirt cleans with ease in a single wipe."


Incorruptibly yours,

Darryl "Clete" Poonsman
Pittsburgh, PA

5:53:39 AM    



It's Torture Day at the Corner!


But sadly, it's not Derb, Jonah, Kathryn Jean, and the others who are getting tortured -- it's merely them spending the day saying that OF COURSE they're against torture, but since nothing they define as torture appeared in those Abu Ghraib photos, then all of the Democratic concern about detainee abuse raised in connection with the Gonzalez nomination must mean that the liberals just aren't manly enough to countenance mere brutality of the kind seen and enjoyed on "NPD Blue."

Let's go through some of yesterday's Corner posts and respond to them (because that seems more civilized than slapping around some Corner folks, even though they probably deserve it):
GONZALES HEARING [John Derbyshire]
What a dismaying spectacle! Right after 9/11 
I wrote a piece against torture which people still quote back at me. I was writing about torture, though: "Rubber truncheons? Electrodes? Pliers? Razor blades? Blocks of ice? Not in my name, no." I don't want fingernails pulled out, flesh sliced, electrodes applied, or systematic beatings.
But wet towels? Sleep deprivation? A whack with a nightstick? (That's what nightsticks are F-O-R.) A kick to get a stubborn hard case into his cell? None of those is torture, and it is shameful and dishonest to say they are. And the Gonzalez, er, interrogators are going much further than that. If we don't give a terrorist cable TV and Nautilus machines, and food for his goldfish, we're "torturing" him? Does anyone in that room have a clue how the world's dirty work is done?
The Abu Ghraib shenanigans (a) were not torture in any sense I understand, and (b) had nothing to do with interrogation. They are, therefore, perfectly irrelevant. What a farrago of nonsense! 
Posted at 10:41 AM
Poor Derb.  Apparently they still won't let him read the grownup newspapers. So let me make three points.

1.  Per the Taguba Report, "the Abu Ghraib shenanigans" involved, among other things::
  • Punching, slapping, and kicking detainees; jumping on their naked feet;
  • Using military working dogs (without muzzles) to intimidate and frighten detainees, and in at least one case biting and severely injuring a detainee;
  • Beating detainees with a broom handle and a chair;
  • Sodomizing a detainee with a chemical light and perhaps a broom stick.
This sounds like something that a normal person would say was certainly torture is the dictionary sense of  "1b : something that causes agony or pain;  2 : the infliction of intense pain (as from burning, crushing, or wounding) to punish, coerce, or afford sadistic pleasure."

2.   While the "shenanigans" may have not occurred in the course of interrogations, the Taguba Report says, "Military Intelligence iinterrogators and Other US Government Agency's interrogators actively requested that MP guards set physical and mental conditions for favorable interrogation of witnesses."  The report recommended action against a contractor who "allowed and/or instructed MPs, who were not trained in interrogation techniques, to facilitate interrogations by 'setting conditions' which were neither authorized and in accordance with applicable regulations/policy.  He clearly knew his instructions equated to physical abuse."

So, the abuse has something to do with interrogation.

Therefore, it is perfectly relevant.

3.  We aren't just talking about Abu Ghraib anymore, Derb.  The "shenangians" also occurred in other facilities in Iraq, and also in Afghanistan and Guantanamo.

I hope this helps, you annoying twit.

RE: CONVERSATION STARTER [John Derbyshire]
Jonah:
Being commentators and not actors, the best we can do on The Corner is say where we stand. Here's where I stand on the precise topics raised by your reader.
Noogies: Yes.
Name calling: Yes.
Murder in custody: I assume "murder" excludes justifiable homicide, e.g. in self-defense, in defense of other staff or prisoners, to prevent possible terrorist escape, and probably one or two others I can't bring to mind. The answer then is: No.
Cigarettes extinguished in ear canals: No.
Anal rape: No.
Dog bites: I'd want to know the circumstances. On the whole -- and having been bitten by dogs myself -- I don't think this very important.
The circumstances we're talking about are: guards using dogs to frighten and intimidate detainees, and in one case, biting and severely injuring a detainee. 

So, Derb, the fact that you were nipped by your neighbor's toy poodle doesn't make somebody else's severe injury "not very important." 
Can your reader, Jonah, supply us with the names and circumstances of those murders in custody?
Or the anal rapes? Names, dates, and circumstances, please.
Derb, the portion of the Taguba Report available to the public doesn't give the names, dates, and circumstances surrounding the report of a detainee being sodomized with a chemical light and perhaps a broom stick.  Howwever, it does include the names of witnesses.  Maybe one of them can give you all the salacious details.

And an LA Times article of 21 December (link provided by Jonah in a later post) notes that "In July, Army criminal investigators were reviewing the alleged rape of a juvenile male detainee at Abu Ghraib prison."  Why don't you ask the Army for more info?  You know, if you're really into anal rape reports.
Your reader is correct: I haven't looked into these charges in detail. Let us be enlightened.
Posted at 12:22 PM
Just because Derb hasn't read any of the hundreds of news reports about the torture allegations doesn't mean that his contention that there was no torture any less valid -- because unless you can remove his fingers from his ears and force him to stop singing "La, la, la, I can't hear you," it means that nothing bad has happened.

SEN. DURBIN [Andy McCarthy]"The torture that occurred at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo." I refer him to the eminent Mr. Derbyshire for a remedial course.
Posted at 12:50 PM
Andy, it's bad enough that Derb is willfully ignorant (and professionally negligent, since he insists on continually writing about something he knows nothing about).  Don't make things worse by showing that you're so ignorant that you think that Derb actually is making valid points.

TORTURE: THE META-ISSUE [John Derbyshire]Jonah:

As interesting as the issue of where to draw the "torture" line, is the meta-issue of why people are engaged passionately with this.
I would much rather, as I said at length in that column I've linked to, that my country not approve systematic torture of captured terrorist suspects.
[...]
So why are some people fixing their interest on this one aspect of things? In some cases I can figure it out. It's not hard to see why Democratic Senators would make a meal of it, for instance. But what about so many of the rest? Why is the thought of U.S. troops misbehaving so obsessively exciting to some Americans, rousing them to such furious indignation? I don't get it. 
Posted at 01:12 PM
Derb, while I am shocked and appalled by the atrocities conducted by the terrorists, my writing extensively about their horrible crimes is unlikely to get them to clean up their act.  However, my writing about the abuses committed by U.S. forces can possibly help inspire other Americans to demand that our leaders implement changes which might make the abuse of prisoners less likely.  Get it now?
But it what you are really puzzled about is why some Americans might care about the abuse which was allegedly conducted to make them safer, read "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas", and then get back to us.

THE SIPOWICZ RULE [Jonah Goldberg]
In the abstract I guess I've been more sympathetic to torture under very specific circumstances. Indeed, I still don't think anyone can deny that there are obvious hypotheticals where no sane person would oppose using torture. But I guess, at the end of the day, I'm in Derb's camp.
And in his sleeping bag too, no doubt.
If those hypotheticals are ever translated into reality -- God forbid -- nobody's going to care about the Geneva Convention. If we know there's a nuclear bomb en route to an American city and we have someone in custody we know has information on how to intercept that bomb, my guess is we'll get that information no matter what the missives and memos from the White House say. And anyone who thinks that's a bad thing is a fool in my book.
Jonah, HAVE we got any valid info about nuclear bombs (or anything of equal import) from any of the detainees who were tortured?  When we do, then we can talk about whether torture is okay when it helps to save the lives of millions of innocent people.  Until then, let's talk about whether torture is okay when it gives us false confessions about membership in terrorist groups, but no actionable information -- or no information at all.
That said, short of those incandescantly clear cases I think torture should be ruled out. But as I've written several times and as Andy McCarthy perfectly summarized yesterday, I think applying the Geneva Convention to al Qaeda detainees is batty.

Moreover, I have no problem with playing a little smacky-face with prisoners. Think about it. The standard being put forward by Sullivan and others on all this would rule the tactics of Detective Andy Sipowicz on NYPD Blue unacceptable. For years, Sipowicz has been smacking suspects around in order to force them to confess. He threatens to "beat their balls off" every other show.
And hey, if a morallly ambiguous TV character does it to fictional bad guys, it MUST be okay.  And highly effective too! 
It is beyond me why this should be considered beyond the pale for terrorists. 
Posted at 01:12 PM
And it is beyond me why we don't send Andy Sipowicz to Guantanamo to do all our interrogations.

TORTURE REPORTS [Jonah Goldberg]

From a reader:
In regard to your request for info on torture reports. Here are a few sample cites:

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-abuse21dec21,0,7615137.story?coll=la-home-nation

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A25962-2004Dec25.html?sub=AR

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A23372-2004Nov30_2.html

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4944094/ (dealing with broader Abu Ghraib abuses than those in the photos)

The stories on the FBI documents were front page news in every major paper. It is somewhat astounding to me that the folks at the Corner seem unaware that they exist.
Yeah, we've all wondered about that.  I've also wonder how the Corner folks know enough to use crayons by themselves.  I suspect that The Corner is actually an elaborate psychological experiment which involves placing a group of people in a giant Skinner box and giving them pellets when they push the "ignorance" bar.
Me: I don't think folks at the Corner were unaware of such reports, just that anecdotes seem to be translated into data pretty easily [...] Posted at 01:47 PM
Oh, I think we'll find that Derb, at least, was unaware of such reports.  But let's keep reading . . .

GONZALES HEARING: LEE CASEY CALLS INTO THE CORNER [KJL]
Lee Casey of the famous Casey-Rivkin team:
Dear Kathryn,

I hate hockey, but I must nevertheless offer a brief reply to Jonah Goldberg's correspondent:

Every conservative I know of who has supported the Administration's detainee policies was shocked and angered by the abuses which took place at Abu Ghraib.  
Lee doesn't know Rush Limbaugh, does he? 

Oh, and Lee, a lot more bad stuff has happened (at Abu Ghraib and at other facilities) than was in those photos -- although I know that a lot of guys, such as Rush Limbaugh, seemed to spend so much time, um, studying those photos of the stacked naked men that they didn't have time to read the newspapers.  And oddly enough, I haven't heard any conservative talking about how shocked and angered they are about those other abuses. 
What the reader really appears to be saying, however, is that the revelation of these abuses should have changed our minds with respect to the Administration's detainee policies. Well, they might well have done exactly that if there was any evidence that it was the policies which caused the abuse. There is none. [...] Posted at 02:08 PM
Lee, the Taguba Report stars by noting that a team of interrogators from Gitmo led by an MG Miller came to Abu Ghraib to "to review current Iraqi Theater ability to rapidly exploit internees for actionable intelligence."  The Executive Summary of the Miller Report stated that "detention operations must act as an enabler for interrogation." It also said that "it is essential that the guard force be actively engaged in setting the conditions for successful exploitation of the internees."  (And as we recently learned, "setting conditions" means "physical abuse.")  Miller's report adds that, "the application of emerging strategic interrogation strategies and techniques contain new approaches and  operational art" -- meaning (to me, at least) that there's the cool new technique of water boarding that the White House and Pentagon say is okay to use on detainees.

Taguba apparently believed that the policies approved for use at Gitmo (and presumably approved by the Administration) were being used at at Abu Ghraib, even though few detainees there were thought to have information worth interrogating them for ("These are not believed to be international terrorists or members of Al Qaida, Anser Al Islam, Taliban, and other international terrorist organizations").
The Taguba Report recommended disciplinary actions be taken against several officers for failing to ensure that the soldiers under their command "knew, understood, and followed the protections afforded to detainees in the Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War." 

I believe that those leaders had gotten word (or at least the impression) that their higher ups believed that the Geneva Convention was no longer relevant to the interrogation of suspect terrorists, and so there was no push at Abu Ghraib to make sure the the soldiers knew and followed this quaint document.  The Taguba Report holds that the failure of the guards and interrogators to know, understand, and follow the Geneva conventions was a major factor in the abuse.  

So, Lee, I believe that the "Administration's detainee policies" was a contribuatory factor to the abuse.   
We could discuss this further, but Derb is back to tell us that he has read some newspaper reports of alleged abuse, and isn't shocked and angered and all.

TORTURE [John Derbyshire]
Jonah: All right, I have checked out those reports your reader sent, and remain deeply unmoved.


" saw a detainee sitting on the floor of the interview room with an Israeli flag draped around him, loud music being played and a strobe flashing."

This is TORTURE? For heaven's sake!
It may not be torture, but It's a violation of the Geneva Conventions.  But that wasn't the biggest thing mentioned in that story, Derb ...
I notice, too, the mention of someone having "placed lighted cigarettes in detainees' ears." Now, a post or two ago, Jonah, one of your readers said: "...Not to mention cigarettes extinguished in ear canals..."

Without having read *all* those reports, I can't help wondering whether the first cigarette-in-ear story hasn't mysteriously morphed into the second. And I'd really like to know WHICH END OF THE CIGARETTE WENT IN THE PRISONER'S EAR. If, as that first reader implied, it was the burning end (intention: infliction of pain & possibly hearing loss) that is one thing. If, on the other hand, it was the unlit end (intention: at minimum, to make the prisoner feel silly, at maximum, to make him afraid you would let the thing burn right down), that's another.
Derb, you'll have to ask the FBI more about that cigarette, because the report came from them.  This is what we do know from the LA Times story: "Documents, some of which were forwarded to the FBI Director, record testimony about FBI agents who 'observed numerous physical abuse incidents of Iraqi civilian detainees,' including 'strangulation, beatings, [and] placement of lit cigarettes into the detainees ear openings.'"

So, whichever end of the lit cigarette was placed in the detainees ear, a normal person should be at least a tad moved about the reported strangulation.
It seems absurd to pick at minutiae like this, but we're talking about drawing lines. And from what I've seen here, there is some shifty sleight of hand going on by the angry-about-torture crowd. 
Posted at 02:32 PM
So, Derb's line is, "Strangulation = okay; non-burning end of a lit cigarette in ear = okay; burning end of cigarette in ear = not okay."  That's good to know, in case Derb is ever picked up for questioning and the authorities want to make him talk.

And while Derb admits that he hasn't read *all* those reports, he did say that he read the ones submitted by Jonah's reader (apparently for the first time, Jonah -- so the Corner folks DIDN'T know all that already!), and they left him unmoved.  So, let's briefly review some passages from them:
1.  The LA Times -- 21 Dec
In July, Army criminal investigators were reviewing "the alleged rape of a juvenile male detainee at Abu Ghraib prison." It was not clear whether the incident was related to a previous report of a boy who was raped by a contractor.

Other agents gave more details of alleged abuses.

In a June instance, an agent from the Washington field office reported that an Abu Ghraib detainee complained he was cuffed and placed into an uncomfortable physical position that the military called "the Scorpion" hold. Then, the prisoner told the FBI, he was 
doused with cold water, dropped onto barbed wire, dragged by his feet and punched in the stomach.
[...]

One FBI report said a Guantanamo Bay detainee in May 2002 was spat upon and then beaten when he tried to protect himself. At one point, soldiers apparently were "beating him and grabbed his head and beat it into the cell floor," knocking him unconscious, the report said.

2.  The Wash Post -- 25 Dec
The detainees who made public claims of torture at Guantanamo Bay describe a prison camp in which abuse is employed as a coordinated tool to aid interrogators and as punishment for minor offenses that irked prison guards. They say military personnel beat and kicked them while they had hoods on their heads and tight shackles on their legs, left them in freezing temperatures and stifling heat, subjected them to repeated, prolonged rectal exams and paraded them naked around the prison as military police snapped pictures.

[...]

Some detainees who have retained lawyers have refused to participate in military reviews of their cases at Guantanamo Bay, and have instead asked the International Committee of the Red Cross to investigate their claims of abuse.

That's the case for Mamdouh Habib, an Australian at Guantanamo Bay. Lawyers familiar with his case, and British detainees, said Habib was in "catastrophic shape" when he arrived in Cuba. Most of his fingernails were missing, and while sleeping at the prison he regularly bled from his nose, mouth and ears, but U.S. officials there denied him treatment, released British detainees said in a report. Fellow detainees said Habib asked medics for help, but they said "if you cooperate with your interrogators, then we can do something."
3.  Wash Post -- 30 Nov
A group of Navy SEALs who worked as part of the task force has been charged with abuse in connection with the deaths of two detainees they arrested in the field. One died in a shower room at Abu Ghraib on Nov. 4, 2003, a month before Herrington arrived for his review.
[...]
Herrington's report also noted that sweeps pulled in hundreds and even thousands of detainees who had no connection to the war. Abu Ghraib, for example, swelled to several thousand more detainees than it could handle. Herrington wrote that aggressive and indiscriminate tactics by the 4th Infantry Division, rounding up random scores of detainees and "dumping them at the door," was a glaring example.
4.  MSNBC
Intelligence officers of the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq estimated that 70 percent to 90 percent of Iraqi detainees were arrested by mistake, the Red Cross said in a report that was disclosed Monday.

[...]
The report said investigators found evidence supporting prisoners’ allegations of other forms of abuse during arrest, initial detention and interrogation, including burns, bruises and other injuries.
Wow, so Derb couldn't care less that most of the detainees in Abu Ghraib really hadn't "done something or other to end up in custody," like he said before.  And he isn't concerned about detainees being raped, dropped in barbed wire, knocked unconscious, given prolonged anal exams, being burned, denied medical treatment, perhaps having their fingernails ripped out, and even being killed.  And he isn't bothered a bit that a good deal of this mistreatment wasn't done to find out about those nuclear weapons, but just because the detainees did something to anger the guards.

Well, I wouldn't want that to be MY position, but as long as Derb is happy with it -- at least he didn't say that the Abu Ghraib abuses were just like fraternity initiations . . .

RE: TORTURE [John Derbyshire]A large, interesting, and quite disturbing subset of the reader e-mails I've been getting on the torture issue consists of accounts of the reader's hazing experience at the hands of a college fraternity. Good grief! I didn't know half this stuff went on.

If you've just been tapped for a college fraternity and are curious to know what you might have to go through by way of initiation, you might want to do a close reading of the Abu Ghraib scandals.

Posted at 05:48 PM
Yes, if joining a fraternity, expect to be:
  • Punched, slapped, kicked, and for the pledge master to jump on your naked feet;
  • Forcibly arranged in various sexually explicit positions for photographing;
  • Forced to remove your clothing and remain naked for several days at a time;
  • Arranged with other naked males detainees in a pile, and then jumped on; 
  • Bitten by a dog and seriously injured, sodomized with a glow stick, etc.
And, even if you say you were just walking down the street and never asked to join this frat in the first place, and that you just want to quit the pledge process and go home, they won't let you out the cell, and will continue holding you there for an indefinite period of time. 
So, I'd think twice about joining a frat, if I were you.

I DON'T KNOW ABOUT YOU GUYS... [Jonah Goldberg]
But I thought the Corner was pretty darn strong today.

Posted at 05:36 PM

3:43:35 AM

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