The Hill:The top Republican on the Senate Intelligence panel on Sunday warned that the Pentagon's plan to release hundreds of photos documenting the abuse of US military detainees will endanger troops and the American public.
"I don't think there's any question it would endanger all of us, because I think it will enhance recruitment for all kinds of terrorists willing to come after us," Sen. Kit Bond (R-Mo.) said on FOX News Sunday.
That genii's already out of the bottle -- the Pentagon's already said the photos exist. But releasing the photos isn't the problem, the problem is that the photos even exist. It's not the photos of the abuse that endangers troops, but the abuse itself. Not only has torture helped terrorists in recruitment, but terrorists are more likely to fight to the death now, since they've got good reason to believe they will be tortured if they're taken alive.
"What happened at Abu Ghraib is what endangers our troops. It's the practices that were authorized by high-level civilian people in the Bush administration which endangers our troops," said Michigan Sen. Carl Levin, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, on the same program.
Bond's argument gets everything nearly bass-ackward, like saying that fault for the crime lies with the witness, not the criminal. The consequences come from the abuse, not the record of the abuse. Kit Bond, like most Republicans these days, tortures logic.
