O how I love the line of thinking that noted Hosenscheißer Matthew Norman of The Independent has adopted in regard to the latest Iranian hostage situation:

[T]he reaction to the televising of Faye Turney on Wednesday does seem slightly hysterical. It goes without saying that the seizure of the 15 sailors and marines, whether or not they had strayed into Iranian waters (and it seems certain that they didn’t), is inexcusable on every level. So is the transparent coercion of a frightened young woman to say things she clearly didn’t wish to say.

And yet although Leading Seaman Turney seemed stressed, naturally enough, she also looked healthy. There were no overt signs of any physical violence, and her hands were not cuffed. She was wearing civilian clothes, and was allowed to smoke. So on hearing Des Browne, the Defence Secretary, saying that it is “totally unacceptable to parade our people in this way,” the image that flashes to mind is that of other people being paraded for a global television audience, their legs and hands chained together, their bodies immersed in lurid orange boiler suits.

The British Government wasn’t directly responsible for Guantanamo Bay, but it colluded in the illegal seizure of suspects taken there and mistreated to an unimaginably worse degree than appears the case with LS Turney. It assisted the Americans in their pioneering extension of the concept of outsourcing to take in torture, allowing CIA jets to refuel at British airports while transporting suspects to countries with a similarly unCyrus-like approach to human rights as modern Iran.

[…]

None of this is to suggest, of course, that one nation’s collusion in the illegal seizure of foreign nationals in any way justifies the use of the same indefensible tactics by another, or diminishes the seriousness of the offence. But British complicity in these American crimes raises questions about the source of the moral authority fuelling the current outrage about LS Turney’s television appearance. If it did contravene the Geneva Convention, inmates of Camp X-Ray were expressly excluded from its protection, although they were supposedly captured in war (the abstract one against terrurrh), and no Cabinet minister publicly objected to that. It also highlights yet again the extent to which the catastrophic blunder in Iraq is undermining attempts to deal effectively with Iran.

Precisely why the Iranians captured the officers remains opaque, even now, a week after the event, largely because of the confused command structure at the top of their government and the factional nature of the military. What is crystal clear, however, is that Iran would never have dared so blatant an act of brinkmanship were it not convinced, quite correctly, that the Iraqi misadventure has rendered Britain too nervous and demoralised, not to mention militarily overstretched, to respond with serious force.  (Emphasis added.)

One passage bears repeating: Iran would never have dared so blatant an act of brinkmanship were it not convinced, quite correctly, that the Iraqi misadventure has rendered Britain too nervous and demoralised, not to mention militarily overstretched, to respond with serious force.

O how droll!  “Terrurrh,” indeed, Mr. Norman!

But might it not be the case that Britain has been rendered “nervous and demoralised” precisely because they have been subjected to wave after nauseating wave of defeatist drivel from the poisoned minds of Islamofascist sympathizers such as Monsieur?  No more Canadian dog food for you, sir!

Your facetious reference to “bodies immersed in lurid orange boiler suits” makes it quite obvious that no one in your family (or your direct circle, for that matter) was harmed in any way on either 9/11 or on July 7, 2005.  I suspect that had Mumsy Dearest been hurt or killed in either of those two cataclysms, your opinion regarding Gitmo fashion wear would be less flippant.  (As I write this Ian Williams—another Brit apologist for Iran—is mumbling away on Fox News about the orange jump suit thing.  What is this Anglo-Saxon fetish for Guantanamo Bay jammies, anyway?)

O the cruelty of “being paraded for a global television audience” with “their legs and hands chained together” and “their bodies immersed in lurid orange boiler suits”!  Indeed, Mr. Norman!  Would that we Americans could rise to a more civilized level of justice—the type of justice practiced, for example, by the captors of Daniel Pearl, Nicholas Berg, Kim Sun Il, Seif Kannan, Shosei Koda, and many nameless (and headless) others.

You stupid shmok!  How perfectly pathetic of you to use the plight of 15 fellow Britons as an excuse to highlight your own self-loathing.  How narcissistic!

May you wake up tomorrow morning in a dank alleyway in Tehran, your pants around your ankles, butt-sore and penniless….

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