My last post on Camp X-ray
I have made a promise to myself and God to lay off the Camp X-ray thing for awhile. Here's the short version: Euro-press hysteria has no perceptible effect on US policy or public opinion. Let them amuse themselves.
The Mirror, which published the hysterical (in both senses) editorial on the Camp X-ray torture by jumpsuit, has conducted a telephone poll on the treatment of the Guantanamo Bay prisoners. 90% of Mirror readers "do not condemn the way the US is dealing with them." It's not "scientific" of course, but it is a striking example of how far out of step British media elites can be with respect to their own readers. Similar margins have resulted from other unscientific call-in polls: Radio 2's Jimmy Young turned up with 92% (via
Iain Murray has the right idea: "I hope Gallup or MORI are conducting a poll as we speak (heck, the American Embassy in the UK should be paying for one) on this subject so we can know the real state of public opinion, but I suspect it'd be overwhelmingly pro-US."
Jonah Goldberg has two columns (here and here) bearing on the Camp X-Ray prisoners.
First, there is nothing wrong and everything right with America and other Western nations adhering to a higher standard than our adversaries. Which is why -- when it's convenient and we've learned what we can from these thugs -- we should give them their Hershey bars, two letters a week and, eventually, their French-accented "human rights lawyers" in $5,000 suits.But even when we test the outer boundaries of our own principles, we're still light years ahead of the societies so often defended by those denouncing us. For example, in Saudi Arabia (the leading exporter of Islamic radicalism), where the Koran is their constitution, they have a much more efficient way of cutting off prisoners' beards: They remove the whole head. And that goes for non-terrorists, too.