HAGELIAN INQUIRY
Re: George Neumayr's Chuck
McHagel:
As a conservative Nebraskan, I'd like to thank you for the spot-on article on Hagel. The move to more moderate social views are bad enough, but he acts like the "International community" elected him. It's all he talks about anymore. I'm sure that the rest of the world is a nice place, but I live in Nebraska. I'd like a Senator who will work to make my little slice of the world a little better.
Anyway, thanks. Please re-run this piece in 2007/08 when the
campaigns are heating up. We need to make sure people know what
they're getting.
-- Russ Bader
Lincoln, Nebraska
I would love to see a grass roots effort to un-seat Sen. Hagel, and
replace him with a REAL Republican.
-- Rick Bradley
Columbia, South Carolina
YOU WILL REAP
Re: Jed Babbin's The Gitmo
Girls:
As a conservative, I dislike sending our women into combat. I
dislike the pornographic cesspool into which our culture has
descended. When I see our women sent into combat so that they may
behave like porn stars, I start at "dislike," proceed quickly to
"abhor" and go on from there. What sanctioning this sort of
interrogation does to American society is the real issue. As to
Iraq, this gross insult to Islam, and indeed Christianity, is known
to the average Iraqi, and he will not forget it. We have planted a
seed that might yet bear bitter fruit.
-- Gary Martin
Assuming that the Washington Post story is correct, I am horrified by it and the thesis of "The Gitmo Girls," by Jed Babbin.
What worries me is not the moral implication of our relationship to the prisoners; it's the moral implication for the interrogators.
For a woman to use her body to buy information is prostitution. The military and our government should not be pimping, period. The president was re-elected partly on the premise that he would uphold Christian values.
It's not enough to say, "Should we require female interrogators to do these things? Certainly not." Like all of us, soldiers also feel peer pressure and want to advance in their careers. We are tempting them to behave immorally. Jesus said: "Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe to stumble, it would be better for him if, with a heavy millstone hung around his neck, he had been cast into the sea."
For our government to permit such techniques is to condone them. Any person of faith and most secularists would be appalled that such behavior was being done in their name.
Besides, it's a stupid strategy. Far more effective would be for
these military women to use their role as professional soldiers to
challenge the prisoners' concepts of America. The hyper-sexualized
America of the media just supports the "Great Satan" mythology, and
it's not accurate. Why play into it?
-- Carol L. Douglas
I don't know whether to laugh or cry when I read about the hellish conditions in Gitmo, being questioned by chicks wearing t-shirts and rubbing up against the suspects. Civil liberties groups and the New York Times seem completely unaware that prisons around the world are packed with men begging for the opportunity to be abused that way. Coming to mention it, there are plenty of men outside of prisons who don't mind that that as well. Terrorists who are so easily offended and who complain so loudly about so little don't even come close to being fearless warriors -- whining, sniveling poltroons is the description that comes to my mind.
Contrary to popular opinion, it looks to me like the madrassas
have been doing an awful job of turning out combatants for the
faith -- no need to worry about beating these guys, they can't take
a hit. The madrassas would do a lot better by recruiting school
girl hockey players, because I have regularly seen them take much
more punishment without complaint than the whining, gutless cowards
in Camp X-ray. Compared to what POWs had to put up with from the
Japanese and from the North Vietnamese, the complaints about Gitmo
are worse than ludicrous. It's about time somebody said so and
stood up to this silly nonsense, instead of making out there is
something to be ashamed of. There isn't -- Gitmo sounds as
threatening as an open plan office that employs a lot of young
women. And if Osama bin Laden thinks he can destroy Western
civilization using snivelling weaklings like those in Gitmo, then
he doesn't even begin to understand the world he lives in.
-- Christopher Holland
In re the use of sex for interrogations: Think about sex in terms
of its purpose. Sex was made for marriage because marriage is an
institution the primary purpose of which is the begetting and
raising of children. Therefore, any sexual expression outside of
marriage is intrinsically immoral. Which obviously includes
titillating prisoners by sexual means. Mental coercion and some
degree of physical force are not inappropriate, because violence
during wartime interrogations is an extension of what must happen
on the battlefield.
-- Kenneth A. Cory
China, Michigan