Tortured

As Good As News has run too many posts to count on torture - just search this blog for "torture" - dozens of posts will appear and most of them, well at least 10%, are serious. Generally we are against torture and particularly upset with Dr. Yes and the other lawyers who strained to opine that interrogation techniques which, historically, had been prosecuted as war crimes are now OK.

Today, stirred by the overkill of coverage on the torture memos release (what's so new here MSM and where have you been for the last five years), for one day only, we will look for another side to the torture issue.

At least one form of torture, though cruel and fiendish beyond comprehension, will not violate the Geneva Convention, or any US law or treaty. The morality of this technique - well, we leave that to the judgment of our readers.

The prisoner is informed, truthfully, that if he can break par on a serious golf course he will be released, no strings attached. The prisoner is provided with equipment, lessons, unlimited practice time - in other words, a fighting chance to break par. The prisoner is then required to play 183 rounds in one month at Augusta National. No prisoner has won freedom. In fact, no prisoner has survived more than 17 rounds without breaking. By breaking we mean weeping like a baby, begging to return to Gitmo, offering the footnotes to Al Qaeda's long-term strategic plan. With waterboarding, you pretty much know it's going to be bad when they cover your face and you hear the water sloshing in the background. Only golf offers the tantalizing promise of the great shot, followed inevitably by the shank, snap hook, missed two foot putt, etc. Somehow the pain of the bad shot is always a surprise, even when it has happened a thousand times before. The more athletic prisoners get the worst of the golf torture, as the dream of freedom seems almost real on a hot streak, only to disappear, like an approach shot that lands a little hard on the wrong side of the green and slides gently into the adjacent bunker.

A second thought is stirred by Peggy Noonan's "sometimes it's better to just keep on walking" response to Obama's release of the torture memos. Didn't Goring say that at Nuremberg? When Jack Bauer saves Los Angeles by extracting the location of a dirty nuclear bomb from a recalcitrant terrorist in the heat of the moment, As Good As News will say "just keep on walking". When military and CIA interrogators seek legal opinions and cabinet level clearances for the use of torture as a regular interrogation technique- and get them - it's time for Nancy Sinatra, not Peggy Noonan. Dr. Yes, one of these days those boots are gonna walk all over you.