Degradation: As American as Baseball Paintball and "A Few Bad Apples" Pie

A placard from Camp Nama in Iraq,
where some detainees were used as paintball targets.

June is Torture Awareness Month, and the Pentagon has chosen to mark the occasion by “omit[ting] from new detainee policies a key tenet of the Geneva Convention that explicitly bans ‘humiliating and degrading treatment.’”

Let that sink in: The Pentagon has decided that US armed forces—acting on behalf of me, and you, and our parents, and our children, and all of our friends and neighbors—can humiliate and degrade prisoners. Humiliate and degrade.

O beautiful for heroes proved
In liberating strife.
Who more than self their country loved
And mercy more than life!
America! America!
May God thy gold refine
Till all success be nobleness
And every gain divine!