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    “Specifically, your house

    This fictional letter on Diplomad reminds me of that classic Bloom County sequence in which Steve Dallas is defending an elderly axe-murderess and, at the arraignment, so overzealously argues that she’s harmless (“She’s a lamb, your honor”) that the bemused judge releases her into his personal custody. Priceless.



    (Via biased Susanna.)



    Added on 25 January: One reader (I forgot to ask whether I could quote him) thinks I’m suggesting here that people who have issues with our treatment of prisoners are a monolithic bunch of idiot leftists. To me, Diplomad’s letter was pretty clearly targeting only the most volubly inane cultural-relativist types, who would complain about our treatment of prisoners if we set each of them up in beachfront property in Antibes. Those who question whether our personnel are acting in arbitrary ways that violate our own ideal of the rule of law, or worry that serious rusty-pliers-and-electrodes stuff may be worked on people because of possible failures in the chain of command–they were not, unless I read Diplomad incorrectly, the satirical target.



    People with legitimate arguments to make do not, after all, rely entirely on vague blather about “cultural differences.” And as for torture, the fictional addressee is someone who has complained specifically about treatment at Guantanamo Bay, where I don’t believe anyone has been accused of torture.



    Added on 27 January: My reader was tenacious (in a good way) and pointed me toward this article from The Baltimore Sun, in which torture allegations are, in fact, made about Guantanamo Bay. Sorry for speaking in ignorance. I still read the letter Diplomad cites as satirizing coarse leftism and not pooh-poohing actual prisoner abuse, but if an extra link will avoid possibly misleading people, here it is.

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