The Prisoner Abuse "Not So Bad" Syndrome

If you're like me, you work with people who don't mind a little prisoner molestation from time to time. After all, if knocking a few scrotums together prompts the testes to name names, then the cause of liberty is well-served. And even if the Red Cross estimate that 70-90% of the inmates were ordinary people picked up off the street, well, "All's fair in love and war," one colleague told me. "Didn't some feminist say that?" Scrota-knockery, here we come.

"The American public needs to understand, we're talking about rape and murder here. We're not just talking about giving people a humiliating experience; we're talking about rape and murder and some very serious charges," said Sen. Lindsay Graham, the distinguished Republican from South Carolina, after viewing the pictures the rest of us are waiting to be leaked to the press...

The other thing my peers like to ask is why American soldiers are held to a different standard than terrorists. After all, if the terrorists are "allowed" to run willy-nilly through the streets of Baghdad setting off road-side bombs, why can't we build nude pyramids and grab a fistful of gonads when it suits us? Well, because we're not fucking terrorists, dude! We're supposed to be held to a different standard. A non-raping standard, for instance. A non-murdering standard, imagine. A non-sodomizing standard, at least not when it's coming out of my goddam paycheck every week. The difference between terrorists and American soldiers is that we, as members of a democratic nation, are responsible for the behavior of our government. Not fair you say? You're goddam right it's not. Neither is pulling the slack of your co-workers when they want to bullshit about sports all afternoon. So what's more important? Honoring your own standards or competing for dominance by somebody else's?