19
The response . . . . should be as simple as it is swift –
kill the bastards . . . . Train assassins . . . Hire
mercenaries . . . . As for the cities or countries that
host these worms, bomb them into basketball courts.
7
For Richard Brookhiser in the New York Observer, basketball courts were
indicative of a lack of commitment:
The response to such a stroke cannot be legal or
diplomatic – the international equivalent of
mediation, or Judge Judy. This is what we have a
military for. Let’s not build any more atomic bombs
until we use the ones we have.
8
And Anne Coulter, writing for National Review Online, went so far as to
suggest (unconsciously one assumes) a fusion of the proselytising zeal of Pius
IX and William McKinley:
We should invade their countries, kill their leaders,
and convert them to Christianity.
9
In the instance of the need to extract information from uncooperative
prisoners, reliable periti are available to advise that the Geneva Convention’s
proscriptions against torture are dispensable. Significantly, there is a
remarkably unnerving equality of meaning between current US policy and
the practices of the Spanish Inquisition. The present situation admits
“extraordinary rendition” whereby a suspect is clothed in an orange jump-
suit, held without legal representation, accused anonymously in many cases,
interrogated, maltreated, and even tortured, and then deported illegally to
another country for the purpose of being tortured again and quite possibly
killed. Under Tomas de Torquemada, suspects were arrested without
Convention