I am SO sick of hearing people testify on the prison scandal who’s major defense is “But…but…the enemy are doing BAD THINGS! They’re worse! They use women and children as shields! They’re BAD PEOPLE! You have to understand that they’re bad!” as if torturing a human being is somehow less bad because somewhere, other people are doing bad things.

I may be a white chick from the suburbs, but my parents hammered into me at a young age that two wrongs do NOT make a right. I’d hate to have to send my Mom to the military police and have her hammer it into these guys. It would be undignified, and I don’t think she can do push-ups.

Either we’re good and civilized people, or torturing people is fine so long as other people are worse than we are. Pick one. You don’t get both. People’d get pretty damn pissed off if I said it was okay to throw OUR soldiers in tiger cages for years on end because we napalmed villages with children now and again, wouldn’t they? And rightly so.

That military duty can be hard on the brain and soldiers can bear an unreasoning grudge against prisoners is something that the military ought to damn well KNOW in advance and protect against. There is absolutely no excuse, and the “But they’re bad TOOO!” defense reminds me more of a child trying to distract someone from his own misbehavior by tattling on a sibling.