They have one of ours now:
Insurgents have captured an American soldier in eastern Afghanistan, the U.S. military said Thursday.
Spokeswoman Capt. Elizabeth Mathias said the soldier went missing on Tuesday.
Will we demand that the Taliban treat our soldier well? Will we call for international oversight? Will we lecture about the use of torture? Will we have the gall to speak about human rights and dignity?
One aspect has been missing in the, still unfathomable to me, debate about whether torture is a necessary evil of being at war: we haven't had our soldiers captured.
But today it is reported that at least one of our troops has been captured. We're not even sure by whom, yet:
But the Taliban claim they have three more:
The Taliban, meanwhile, claims to be holding three soldiers on Afghanistan's border with Pakistan in the province of Khost, but that has not been confirmed by the Pentagon.
So, what can we possibly do or say at this juncture to protect our soldiers from "enhanced interrogation". I'd like to hear Cheney demand that our soldiers be treated with dignity and given their human rights. I'd like to hear him explain why they should be treated so. And I'd like to hear him explain to the families of these men why he didn't do all that he could to leave us on the moral high ground so that we were in the strongest position possible to protect our troops.
And I'd like him to pay for all the physical and mental health care needs of any of our soldiers who are treated poorly. That is, if they survive.
I'm going to research Cheney quotes about why torture is necessary today and post them here as updates.
Meanwhile, my prayers, meditation, intentions are with every prisoner who is not treated well. Maybe we, the human race, will some day learn how self-destructive it is.
May, 2009: Responding to a Neil Cavuto question about the whether the Obama administration had contacted regarding the release of photos:
They campaigned all across the country, from — from one end of the country to the other — against enhanced interrogation techniques, and made it very clear they were opposed to that. They called it torture. I don't believe it was torture. We had attorneys who gave us clear guidance as to what was appropriate and what wasn't.
So - will he deem it "appropriate" when the same techniques on our soldiers? What if it was his daughter?