Rondelle

You know, that might be the answer:
to act boastfully about something
we ought to be ashamed of.
That's a trick that never seems to fail.
--Catch-22, Joseph Heller

T.V. news and cameras
There's choppers in the sky
Marines, police, reporters
Ask the where, for and why
--How Bizarre, OMC
______________

Let's try some Ranger logic:

• The Phony War on Terror (PWOT ©) is called a war.

• The detainees in this Phony War are not Prisoners of War.

• The detainees were tortured

• The torture victims cannot have the photographs testifying to their torture released by the U.S. Department of Defense because this would violate the Geneva Conventions, under which they are not protected, because they are not POW's.

This argument from the Obama administration is as dishonest and insincere as any of the effluent which flowed out of the Bush White House. The argument further goes that release of the photos will radicalize the Muslim world, putting our soldiers at risk. Really? And just when it was all going so well.

True that, on the risk part. So why didn't somebody think about this prior to starting down this slippery slope? A Private E-3 could figure this one out, even without recourse to a Helpline.

So, they are not POW's, but releasing their photos would violate their POW rights under the Geneva Convention, a document under which they do not fall. Yossarian understood.

It is not the photos which will incite hatred, but the torture and abuse which the photos document. The photos are mere artifacts, the abuse is the unassailable reality. The people who underwent that treatment do not need any photos to remind them.

We love to play with words, a lawyer's game. But outside of the Beltway, in some very dire environments, word games don't hold much truck.