John McCain was tortured in North Vietnam.  Many of our Greatest Generation were tortured by the Japanese during World War 2.   Very few things that were done at Al Gharib were torture by those standards.  I'm sorry that Sen. McCain has lost his perspective, but the more we allow the left to define 'torture', the more we trivialize the real thing, and the more we lose what little respect our enemies have for us.

I'm not suggesting we become like them, not at all.  I am suggesting that putting panties on someone's head, having him sit for the equivalent of a $200 lap dance, or having him don a doggie collar and pose with a female soldier is NOT torture.  Not now, not ever, and particularly not to someone whose cohorts will gladly slice a civilian's throat on camera (Danny Pearl) or burn the bodies of civilian contractors and dangle their bodies over that bridge in Fallujah. 

Don't Sen. McCain and his collegues understand that words mean something.  When you let the left in this country define the terms, the terms lose meaning.  Sexual harassment comes to mind.  It used to mean something, something horrible, using language to a female coworker, or harassing her with sexual innuendo and such.  Now, it can mean something like having a photo of your wife in a bikini on your desk; if it offends your female co-worker who happens to walk by your desk once, harassment.  

They want to do the same to torture.  If we start thinking of panties on the head as torture, then when kids learn about the Bataan death march, and that is called 'torture', well, they'll think 'what's the big deal?'  And why wouldn't they? 

When you have the same people who advocate partial  birth abortions cringing at the idea someone in Guantanamo is being shown a naked woman's picture to make him feel uncomfortable, has the world gone nuts, or what?  Just because some people in this world are living in the 7th Century, should we not show them movies because they will think witchcraft is involved? 

If we continue to worry so much about their sensitivities, and not enough about our survival, we don't have long for this world.  They, in turn, laugh as we contort ourselves trying to stop panties on the head and sleep deprivation, while their 'soldiers' wouldn't blink before cutting off your head for saying something they think disrespects Allah.

We're doomed unless we take control of our language again, and fight our enemy, if not at 'their level', at least in a way that doesn't require we use a knife while they have an AK-47 aimed at our heads.

Westsider/9-20-2006