Breaking Horror: We Made an Islamist Talk to a Woman.

Apparently, we’re supposed to be scandalized.

Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, was subjected to the CIA’s harshest interrogation methods while he was held in secret prisons around the world for more than three years, part of an interrogation regimen that the International Committee of the Red Cross has called “tantamount to torture,” according to a New Yorker article to be published on the magazine’s Web site today.

In a 12-page article released yesterday, reporter Jane Mayer analyzes the development of the CIA’s secret interrogation techniques and writes that a confidential ICRC report to the U.S. government details Mohammed’s assertions that he was tortured by the CIA. Unnamed Washington sources told Mayer that Mohammed said he was held naked in his cell, questioned by female interrogators to humiliate him, attached to a dog leash and made to run into walls, and put in painful positions while chained to the floor. Mohammed also said he was “waterboarded” — a simulated drowning — in addition to being held in suffocating heat and painfully cold conditions. Mohammed’s captors also told him shortly after his arrest in March 2003: “We’re not going to kill you. But we’re going to take you to the very brink of your death and back,” the article said.

Okay…so what? The ICRC calls this treatment “tantamount to torture” which, by definition, means it’s not torture. Oh, I’m sure the usual suspects are going to scream bloody murder and you can track all the hysterical shrieking at the memeorandum link.

Still, what are we talking about here? Embarrassment? Minor physical pain? Being told that he would be taken to the “brink of death”? Having to answer to *gasp* women?

Big freaking deal. Thousands of our soldiers go through far worse in many training courses without so much as a blink from the MSM. Those of you who were members of a fraternity up until about ten years ago have endured worse treatment. Don’t shed a tear for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Islamist would-be killer. And don’t spend a second listening to the likes of the ICRC, which can’t seem to spend much time criticizing actual torture being committed in dozens of nations right now. Compare the relatively harmless practice of waterboarding, where the most serious effect is to make the subject think he’s drowning, with what China does to its dissidents or what Cuba does to reporters who criticize Castro. It’s really easy to criticize the United States because we freely allow criticism without official penalty. It takes a lot more courage – something that many on the left simply do not have – to criticize actual torture and oppression.