Is it going too far?

I've been thinking about the illusory Newsweek story about a Koran being flushed down the toilet. All things being equal, we should respect other people's religious beliefs and flushing someone's holy book down a toilet is not something which we should do. But the thing is, not all things are equal.

You see, the people at Gitmo are not ordinary people. They are radical terrorists bent on Western destruction and world-wide Islamic rule. In their eyes we are all infidels deserving of death. We are the Great Satan and must be destroyed.

Now, I don't think that flushing religious objects down a toilet is a particularly effective interrogation technique. If that were done to me, it would probably harden my resolve not to cooperate. But what if it were an effective technique. Should we do it? I don't really have a problem with it.

I am not a supporter of torture even though I feel certain people are deserving of torture as a punishment for their crimes. On that point I bow to the wisdom of Mother Church and do not endorse it in any way, shape or form. But flushing a book (or pages of a book or however it is you flush a book) is in no way torture. Is it mean? Sure. But this isn't grade school, kids. It's war. In war, mean things happen.