Rush Agrees: POW Torture Just Like Frat Pledging

Thanks to Pharyngula for Rush's take:

"This is no different than what happens at the skull and bones initiation and we're going to ruin people's lives over it and we're going to hamper our military effort, and then we are going to really hammer them because they had a good time. You know, these people are being fired at every day. I'm talking about people having a good time, these people, you ever heard of emotional release? You heard of need to blow some steam off?"

Okay, granted I never saw the Skull and Bones ceremony but I witnessed a number of fraternity initiations. What I saw was a bunch of guys trying to read booklets in the dark in front of some other guys holding candles, then everybody going out to bars. And even if you hold onto the frat comparison, pledges aren't forced to be there (the battered-wife syndrome defense seems laughable when applied to frat houses).

My dad was an MP in 1965 and, while worse things happened in Vietnam, it was his duty to arrest soldiers doing anything like this. Yes, our troops are under horrible strain that I can't begin to imagine but even if stripping POWs naked isn't a big deal to you, there's still "disgrace to the uniform" and "conducting unbecoming." No one with any degree of respect to the military should condone this at all.