If you haven’t seen it, be sure to read this piece on Billy Wilder’s film "Stallag 17" by Chris Kelly at Huffpost.  Please read the whole thing, but for the impatient among you, here’s the nub:

The prisoners get mail from home. They get visits from the Red Cross. They aren’t even kept in cages. No one hoods them, or electrocutes them, or pretends to execute them, or places them in a "stress position" or walks them around on a leash. At one of the darkest points in the story, one of them is forced to stand for a few days without sleep. Like that even hurts.

Don’t the guards want their country to win? These guys — the prisoners — are all members of an organization (The United States Army Air Force) that not only is thinking of using weapons of mass destruction, they actually are. Night after night. From planes.

They have information that could save German lives. But no one seems to have given their interrogators the tools they need to get it.

And now my stomach hurts. Because sometimes even sarcasm can only get you so far.

In real life, the Nazis did commit atrocities against American prisoners of war. At Malmedy. At Mauthausen. That’s why we hate Nazis. Because they were bad.

In real life, bombing Germany killed a half million civilians, but interned American and British airmen were generally treated according to the Geneva Conventions. They weren’t systematically tortured. They weren’t deliberately humiliated. They weren’t held in solitary cells. International organizations were given their names and their families were informed of their capture. Their mortality rate was less than 1%.

And they were being held by the worst government on earth.

It’s almost like the hippies at MoveOn have it backwards. When it comes to protecting his country, Hitler isn’t George Bush.

Dang, I keep forgetting.  9/11 changed everything. We’re not dealing with human beings anymore, but with Muslim devils.  I’m sorry, but in my opinion there simply isn’t enough outrage about what this administration has done ito those who would too gladly abuse human rights when it serves their interests. Too many Americans are still in the habit of thinking it must be ok if our democratically elected leaders say it’s ok.  We’re the good guys, so ipso facto everything we do is good.  Most Americans have yet to grasp the enormity of what this administration has done, nor do they understand the consequences.