Sometimes I wish I could buy some people a clue in the same manner as Wheel of Fortune contestants can purchase vowels from Vanna White. The latest meme coming from Senate Democrats regarding Camp X-Ray in Guantanamo Bay -- now that their characterizations of torture chambers worthy of Josef Mengele have been debunked -- holds that our failure to give full POW status to terrorists at Gitmo will lead our enemy to abuse captured US soldiers.

Quit laughing. I'm serious:

The U.S. Congress should pass legislation defining the legal status of enemy combatants at Guantanamo Bay to avoid more damage to the United States' image abroad and reprisals against U.S. soldiers, senators said on Thursday. ...

Senators said harsh interrogation practices and the refusal to grant prisoner of war status to detainees could backfire when U.S. soldiers are captured.

"Our troops are looking at us to see whether we're going to adopt a standard that if they were captured would be acceptable," said Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, the committee's top Democrat.

Perhaps the Senators have focused too closely on Karl Rove the past few days, and simply don't recall the lovely treatment afforded Eugene Armstrong. Or Paul Johnson. Or Nick Berg. Or the four American contractors who not only got killed, but burned, dismembered, and hung from bridges in Fallujah.

Does anyone in the United States Senate really expect us to believe that any of these men would have met any other fate if we had classified Gitmo prisoners as POWs? Either the Democratic caucus has gone insane or they think we have. Expecting mercy from people who hide among the civilians they butcher, and rationalizing their bloodlust as a normal reaction to the legal status of captured terrorists, have to rank among the most clueless notions of the war up to now.

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Tracked on July 14, 2005 11:48 PM