There's a saying that goes "A voice of reason is the only thing a fool ignores and a madman fears." Luckily, there are few voices of reason available to the American public. The Americans are not barbaric enough (as are we) to kill a defenseless enemy outright. And their justice system can be co-opted almost as easily as the Europeans'. The only real threat we face is from the extra-judicial system they have set up in places like Guantanamo. It's not that our fighters face torture (as we know it). Instead, without daily indoctrinations and orgies of death and destruction, they regain their humanity and therefore become useless to us. From the Strategy Page:
If one thing never seems to go away, it is the claims of abuse and/or torture at Guantanamo Bay. The latest claim comes from an Australian detainee captured around the time of the American Taliban, Johnny Walker Lindh. In this case, the media outlet pushing the story is the International Herald Tribune, a subsidiary of the New York Times. It is the big lie that never goes away, having hit everything from newspapers to the floor of the United States Senate to the TV series "Law and Order: Criminal Intent"...
