Bush's Shrinking Safety Zone

Fort Carson is located south of the city which neighbors mine. Funny thing I over heard two summers ago.

I went to Chinamart, trying to find some potting soil made in the USA. I was standing in the check out line with my 20 pounds of good American earth in my cart. The two men in front of me were soldiers stationed at Ft. Carson. They began to discuss the death of an Iraqi officer who had been strangled with an electrical cord while zipped in his sleeping bag. The two young men thought this incident was an example of some good, clean fun. They spoke as if they had personally witnessed what they were talking about.

I felt horrified to overhear this bit of conversation. I thought at the time that they were exagerating, the way young men sometimes do when speaking of war time experiences.

Last Veteran's day, the local PBS station showed a documentary about the experiences of young Air Force pilots who were graduates of the US Air Force Academy which is up north of here on the opposite end of town from Ft. Carson. The men in the documentary had been "guests" at the Hanoi Hilton. They said that under torture a man will say anything his captors demand him to say. They described what they had to endure. I had to bail from watching about half way through.

Information obtained by torture is worse than no information at all. If American soldiers are captured over in the Middle East and experience the hospitality of a "Baghdad Hilton," it will hardly be any great surprise. And the US will have no higher ground of moral outrage to express.

The Air Force Pilots who had been captured in the Vietnam War said that one of the things that kept them going was their own inner knowledge of their integrity and that of their country.

South of Colorado Springs and back east in the White House, the integrity component sees to be curiously absent these days.