Torture

I’ve basically stayed off of this subject.

Why? Because I don’t think we should torture, and at the same time I don’t think playing rap music or exposing someone to menstrual blood really is torture and at the same time, I’m not so naive to think it never happens, nor so naive to think that ex-prisoners would not make up stories of torture in order to act the sympathetic victims.

So I stay out of it.

Now this guy (the medic accused of spreading hiv to infants in Libya) sounds as though he was tortured and it sounds horrible. After finally “confessing” he was put into prison:

The guards brought the other prisoners Libyan newspapers, which accused us of being child murderers. The Arab papers also spread these lies, picking up their stories from Libyan sources. Instead of defending me, the Palestinian envoy claimed that I had confessed to him that I was a Mossad agent and had deliberately infected the children. Many of the prisoners believed this. We Arabs are hypocrites. We know the truth and yet we believe the lies.

Mr. al-Hazouz is now a Bulgarian citizen. May he live a peaceful rest of his life. His story is worth a read.

Hostage Taking

As we all know you can’t negotiate with hostage takers or they just do it again.

So this struck a chord this morning.

1. Karzai and Bush say they don’t negotiate with kidnappers
2. The Taleban the next day say they’ll release hostages to match the number of released women from Afghan prisons

Yet the Taleban don’t know if there really are women there.
But it will be Karzai and Bush’s fault if the Korean hostages are killed.

??
From a kidnapper:

“We’re ready for such a deal. We don’t know how many women are in Bagram and Kandahar,” he said by phone from an unknown location.

And again:

Ahmadi, the Taleban spokesman, reiterated a murder threat against the Christian aid workers.

“If Karzai and Bush don’t change their position, they’ll be responsible,” he said.

Dear Mr. Ahmadi,
This is how life actually works. Murderers are actually responsible rather than the people who are acting sanely.
Terri

Poll Numbers

Powerline reports today that President Bush has growing support amongst his supporters.

White/middle aged/rural/married/Republican/men in the SW and West.

Well – Mr. President, you still have my support too.
White/middleaged/urban/single/Democrat/woman in the West.

I do love numbers/correlations.
The big report about his poll numbers climbing can probably be attributed to gas prices falling.
And since you can’t like Congress and the President, Congress’s numbers will have to go down.

Happy Blogoversary

to Instapundit! 6 years!!
Click on the link to go to his site and see his original postings!

The guy’s amazing.
Six years at his pace!