I see Joe Biden (a Democrat, but at least somebody who's saying something sensible) has called for the shutdown of the Guantanamo Bay detention camp and letting prisoners go against whom we have no case, putting the rest of them into the judicial system where they'll have benefit of counsel. Remember benefit of counsel? One of the foundations of our form of government? Biden's rationale is Guantanamo has by its very existence recruited a lifetime supply of new recruits for terrorist organizations. Bin Laden must see Guantanamo a gift from a grateful God, a sign She's is on his side. I heard nothing in Biden's statement about torture being a tool that a people who call themselves a democratic and humanitarian nation shouldn't use, but no complaints. Just get rid of the damned thing and get the bastards that thought it up out of our government.

You do go on.

It seems so stupid. We talked about it during the Vietnam era. Do you or when do you apply the pliers? As young inexperienced Infantry lieutenants we figured there may be a time for pliers - what, after all, did we know about war? - but not wholesale, not spelled out with search lights advertising it to the world: “we're slicing up your people - sorry if it turns out they're innocent, but we're in a hurry - in a place where the sun always shines except inside their cells”. It doesn't matter if they're using torture - it sure sounds like they are - that's the message, that's what the world believes. The people who set this up are stone cold bloody stupid.