These people are animals

G. K. Chesterton said that original sin is the only Christian doctrine which could be empirically demonstrated. If I ever doubted him, the al-Qaeda documents on The Smoking Gun would convince me in a sickening way. The background:

MAY 24--In a recent raid on an al-Qaeda safe house in Iraq, U.S. military officials recovered an assortment of crude drawings depicting torture methods like "blowtorch to the skin" and "eye removal." Along with the images, which you'll find on the following pages, soldiers seized various torture implements, like meat cleavers, whips, and wire cutters....The images, which were just declassified by the Department of Defense, also include a picture of a ramshackle Baghdad safe house described as an "al-Qaeda torture chamber." It was there, during an April 24 raid, that soldiers found a man suspended from the ceiling by a chain. According to the military, he had been abducted from his job and was being beaten daily by his captors. In a raid earlier this week, Coalition Forces freed five Iraqis who were found in a padlocked room in Karmah. The group, which included a boy, were reportedly beaten with chains, cables, and hoses.

There are photos of the torture tools and of the injuries on the victims that I didn't look at. Oddly enough, this hasn't shown up on any media sites yet. In fact, the only result on a Google News search for it (as of now, anyway) is an article at Newsbusters questioning whether the media will cover it as heavily as Abu Ghraig. Any bets?

Now, you won't hear me defending practices like waterboarding, or the stuff that went on at Abu Ghraig. It's disgraceful that our agents are using any form of torture. It's disgraceful, because we're Americans, and Americans simply don't do things like that. I hope the next administration will put a stop to that; I don't know that I hold out any hope for this one.

But this is a while 'nother dimension. Our techniques, as bad as they may get, aren't in the same league with what these al-Qaeda creatures are using as their standard operating procedure. Because of that, I don't have any qualms about finishing out this occupation. These aren't men; these are animals. Vermin. And for the life of me I can't see why they should be allowed to continue breathing any longer than it takes us to find them. If that makes me a warmonger, so be it. It also makes me a man with a conscience.

A/T to Protein Wisdom.