Sullivan Flip-Flop

Here’s Andrew Sullivan writing today on the devastating revelation that the American military did not give the Red Cross prompt access to detainees at Gitmo (heavens, no!):

Why were some prisoners withheld from Red Cross access – and in writing, a sign of the confidence some had that the Bush administration was very comfortable flouting international law? You know and I know. They were being tortured.

That’s ridiculous on its face, but fine. Let’s take a trip down memory lane though, way, way back to October of this year, when the Washington Post reported on the reunion of WWII interrogators at Fort Hunt:

Nearly 4,000 prisoners of war, most of them German scientists and submariners, were brought in for questioning for days, even weeks, before their presence was reported to the Red Cross, a process that did not comply with the Geneva Conventions. Many of the interrogators were refugees from the Third Reich.

What did Andrew say about the men at Fort Hood? That they were torturing their prisoners? No, he took precisely the opposite view, holding these men up as “the real America“–which they undoubtedly are:

I am often accused of hysteria by the Bush-blogs on the question of torture. I hope they will read this moving account of a recent attempt to organize reunions of those in the Greatest Generation who were ordered in World War II to interrogate Nazi prisoners of war for vital intelligence…. Yesterday’s heroes were made of different stuff.

Andrew, you are accused of hysteria because you are hysterical. And inconsistent. What, exactly, is the difference between these two stories, which both feature Americans denying prisoners access to the Red Cross? And the Germans were uniformed combatants–if anything, the failure to do so was worse then. But for Sullivan’s purposes, I suppose accusing the entire Guantanamo Naval Station of war crimes is as easy as pressing ‘publish.’

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