You Want To Know What Torture Really Is?

Ask these guys. Ex-POWs defend tough interrogation of terrorism suspects:

The Geneva Convention meant nothing to Don Heiliger's captors.

To the men who used ropes and handcuffs to twist Heiliger's arms behind him until his shoulder blades touched and his arms went numb, the rules regarding humane treatment of prisoners of war were a joke.

Shot down over Vietnam on May 15, 1967, the Navy pilot who later became a Dane County supervisor was tortured and told he was a criminal who had no protection under the Geneva Convention.

The debate over the rules for the interrogation and trial of terrorist suspects is more than political rhetoric for Heiliger and other Wisconsin ex-prisoners of war, who spent days and weeks and years in captivity never knowing if they would survive their ordeal. Even as President Bush and key Republican senators such as John McCain reached an agreement last week over the issue, Heiliger's opinion was emphatic: The Geneva Conventions don't apply to terror suspects.

"To try terrorists doesn't bother me at all, because I don't think they're soldiers," said Heiliger, 69, of Stoughton.

Dan Doughty agrees. He, too, was shot down in Vietnam and spent almost seven years as a prisoner of war. He, too, was tortured and forced to write letters saying he was treated well.

In the war on terror, "there are no uniformed soldiers. They're not fighting for a country. They don't have a nation behind them," said Doughty, 73, who grew up in Ladysmith and now lives in Eau Claire. "I'd sure hate to see several thousand people die (in a terror attack) because we couldn't ask a question for fear we were mistreating' terror suspects.

When he was first captured, he told his captors his name, rank, serial number and date of birth--the only information military members are obligated to provide under the Geneva Conventions.

It didn't do any good and only infuriated Doughty's captors. It took two decades for the numbness in Doughty's hands and arms to go away.

Doughty saw the Abu Ghraib prison scandal photos and read about the convictions of American soldiers working as guards at the Baghdad prison. In Doughty's opinion, the Abu Ghraib prisoners were mistreated, not tortured. And the Bush administration's attempt to clarify some of the language in the Geneva Conventions probably won't matter in future wars, he said.

"I don't think anybody we'd have a future war with is going to be different than Vietnam," Doughty said. "Look at what happened to our soldiers that have been captured (in Iraq this year). They've been tortured and cut up and put in the street. That's what we're dealing with."

I wonder if liberals would be willing to bring their beloved "Chicken Hawk" standard to bear on this issue: only those who actually have been tortured are allowed to offer an opinion on what it actually is. Somehow I doubt it.