more torture logic

Over at Hit and Run, Matt Welch says it well:

...there is this strange assumption that the terrorists and/or insurgents have an unfair advantage, one which we need to erase by adopting their tactics, however unsavory. If that's the case, why aren't we teaching our 12-year-old girls to strap nail bombs to their bodies before riding the bus? Terrorists, who by definition are people who couldn't win a fair fight, use unfair tactics out of desperation, and also to horrify the sensibilities of citizens living under the terrorists' enemy's government. Their actions are almost always incompatible with spreading the cause of freedom. A military which sinks to their level risks alienating the very people they're supposed to liberate.

Welch is responding to the absurd notion that the mightiest military in the world (ours, if you were wondering) is not fighting on a level playing field and has both hands tied behind its back if it can't torture everyone who looks at it cross-eyed.

It's crucial to see this as the logical outcome of neocon thinking. Ever since its inception, it has embraced the totalitarian State, asserting that it was necessary to preserve freedom and that only after winning, could we return to the luxury of liberty and that anyone who opposes even the worst depradations of the current administration is, bizarrely, anti-freedom.