A Damnable Sin

(From the Seattle Times) "Would you agree a dunk in water is a no-brainer if it can save lives?" Scott Hennen, of WDAY in Fargo, N.D., asked Cheney on Tuesday. "Well, it's a no-brainer for me," Cheney responded.

Cheney also said he agreed with Hennen that the debate over interrogation techniques was "a little silly," and he praised the information obtained from U.S. terrorism suspects during questioning.

This is not the way MY country behaves.  When I was in Iraq last I demanded of my teams a modification of a tactic that was all too common - a thing I saw over and over again. Here is the scenario.

Your small convoy is traveling through a city and comes to a choke point - generally an area around an intersection with a market likely near-by.  Nine times out of ten traffic becomes congested in all directions.  Occasionally you can jump the curb and navigate the wrong way but not always.

The tactic I saw most folks execute (those damned criminal mercenaries most of all) was thus.  Dismount a few Joes, have them point weapons in the face of every vehicle in the way, one by one if necessary, to clear a path.  This process involves a lot of screaming, shouting and cursing - often at families with women and children present.  You cannot possibly imagine the scene - it is barbarism.

I sat my guys down, team by team and had a heart to heart talk with them early on.  I asked them something simple.  I told them that if any of us were to die that it was our fate but we should do it with honor and dignity and in a way that our friends and families would be proud of. I asked them to face their fate but live like men of honor. 

We changed our tactics, we took risks but we never went to sleep at night with the images of scared women and children.

No decent man wants to live knowing another man was tortured so that he may live.  Only a coward could be happy clinging to such a life.  The only no-brainer in the statement above is how this man or any other man like him can sleep at night. 

There is a judge of these sorts of men that sits above all men, there is a place for men like this and their evil deeds. One wonders how "silly" Mr. Cheney thinks this all is when he answers to that judge for his crimes.