How long, Oh Lord?

(via Best of the Web)

As she stepped up to the Iraqi checkpoint, a military policeman suddenly pulled a knife, slashed open the flimsy plastic containers and splashed petrol all over her.

Then the head of the Iraqi border guard casually walked up to her, pulled a lighter from his pocket and set her ablaze. Soaked in fuel, she began to burn like a torch."

And then this:

[T]wo naturalized Americans and a Canadian--who spent three months in custody before being released by a Pakistani court. One of them, Usman Ali Khawaja, tells the wire service: "They tortured us psychologically, but not physically. We had several sleepless nights, simply being away from home itself is a torture."

Update: Later I heard a report of Israeli tanks moving into Gaza and charges that a Palestinian woman had been similarly burned as a result. The Israelis are trying to put a stop to the firing of crude rockets being fired from this area into Israeli territory. I am disturbed by the suffering of people like this, but I don't know whether I can trust reports like this coming from PLA sources. In any event, there is no comparison with the cruelty of the first story and the injuries caused by attempts to stop attacks. This is the difference between terrorism and conventional warfare conducted in accordance with international codes.

I can hear the sneering of the No War Ever contingent, but I don't take them seriously. They also think that Saddam hasn't hurt anybody and isn't a threat to anyone else. Such people are not to be taken seriously. Americans are compassionate to a fault and will not tolerate things like this. Soldiers found doing things like the Iraqi border ghoul above would be courtmartialed and imprisoned. If an Israeli soldier were found to have deliberately doused a Palestinian in kerosene and set her on fire, I would expect the same.