This is Torture?

Like many Americans, I was shocked and revolted by last Spring's revelations that detainees at the US-run prison in Abu Ghraib, Iraq were subjected to attacks by dogs, naked human pyramids and other degradations. But this takes things too far, the wrong way. The Washington Post, in a front-page article titled Detainees Accuse Female Interrogators, reported yesterday that some detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba were "abused" because "women rubbed their bodies against the men, wore skimpy clothes in front of them, made sexually explicit remarks and touched them provocatively." That's not torture and it's not anything like the sort of brutality outlawed by the Geneva Convention (which the Administration refuses to apply to Iraq).

Now we all know that sexual values and mores in Muslim countries are more restrictive than in America and most Western democracies. But still, using sex to entice men to talk is the oldest game in the book of espionage. And any man, Muslim or not, who would complain that some women rubbed their bodies provocatively while wearing skimpy clothing is just out of his mind. (We can leave aside the 72 virgins that Muslim martyrs are supposed to receive in heaven -- what are they for if not sex?) I mean, this is something for which most men would LOVE to be on the receiving end. Reminds me more of the way in which the Army won the Iraq war in the first three weeks. They used bullhorns to announce loudly in contested areas that Iraqi men had small penises and could not satisfy their women. So the stupid Iraqi soildiers were so angry they stormed out of their foxholes and got machine-gunned to death instantly.

They can't have it both ways. Either Muslim men are defiantly proud of their sexual prowess, in which case provocative body rubbing by sexy girls should be no big deal, or they are sexually deficient, in which case the provocation here was as offensive as Ginger Lynn accosting a bunch of gay men. Whatever, but if this is torture, send me to Iraq!!

 Posted by glenn