All About the Panties

To Rep. Dana Rohrbacher, the debate over torture is really all about women's underwear, with which he seems to have an unseemly obsession:

An exasperated Rep. Bill Delahunt, D-Mass., reminded Rohrabacher that interrogators were also seen physically abusing detainees.

"This isn't about panties on the head," Delahunt said. "This is about physical pressure, waterboarding and other techniques that apparently were utilized at Guantanamo."

Rohrabacher made a final point.

"I, in no way, will ever apologize that someone put panties on the head of this 9/11 terrorist and treated him without respect," he said. "That man should have no respect."

If we don't engage in fraternity-style pranks against suspected terrorists, then the terrorists have won.

Comments

Rohrabacher's final point is fucking unbelievable. A more gauche, uncivilized and self-undermining expression of righteousness could hardly be conceived of.

Posted by Bill | June 6, 2008 8:59 AM

I mean, somebody post his address and phone number. By public service standards this would be unacceptable behavior from a substitute school teacher, let alone a national legislator.

Posted by Bill | June 6, 2008 9:03 AM

Ladies and gentlemen, your republican party!!

Posted by cd6 | June 6, 2008 9:15 AM

Somebody should have asked Rohrabacher, a cartoon jackass, the Occam's razor question: If it was so frivolous and harmless, why did some douchebag waste time putting panties on anyone's head in the first place?

We're (by Dana's lights) channeling Jack Bauer, fighting the ticking time bomb, and here's a guy playing "Animal House." He's just in the frigging way, making like a juvenile Alpha-Delt.

Take that guy out and shoot him, Jack!

Posted by elle loco | June 6, 2008 9:16 AM

Added Rohrabacher: "I have to pay $500 to get someone to watch me wear panties, and we're doing it to these people for free."

Posted by SP | June 6, 2008 9:17 AM

Agreed: start by waterboarding all pasty bearded men in this photo. More background here.

Posted by norbizness | June 6, 2008 9:17 AM

It really is all about dick and pussy with the GOP these days, isn't it?

Posted by Reality Man | June 6, 2008 9:21 AM

Not that I agree with Rohrabacher but honestly this is not something I will lose much sleep over. As the post implies, worse things happen in college dorm rooms all over country(let alone in American prisons). On my outrage meter this just isnt that significant.

Posted by MS | June 6, 2008 9:27 AM

Pretty sure that I've read studies proving 'panties on head' does not yield valid intelligence.

Posted by asl | June 6, 2008 9:39 AM

Sooo... now they hate us for... our panties???

Posted by Roddy McCorley | June 6, 2008 9:46 AM

MS -

Before you sleep soundly tonight, I would like to make this point:

When photos of detainees with panties on their circulate through the Muslim world (and they do), it inspires yet another round of violence against our interests abroad. Of course, there are die hards who will fight us, attack us and bomb us no matter what. But acts like this inspire even those who might never have acted on feelings of hostility against us to do just that.

Posted by Trigger | June 6, 2008 10:02 AM

Trigger,

Fair point. Although on the other hand, printing cartoons with Mohammend, or using the name for a teddy bear can also inspire violence against our interests. Not that we should not exercise due sensitivity but it just seems it is extremely easy to "inspire violence" in the middle east.

Posted by MS | June 6, 2008 10:21 AM

I often use the 'panties on the head' tactic when sleep goggles aren't available.

Posted by Joe | June 6, 2008 10:29 AM

Although on the other hand, printing cartoons with Mohammend, or using the name for a teddy bear can also inspire violence against our interests. Not that we should not exercise due sensitivity but it just seems it is extremely easy to "inspire violence" in the middle east.

This isn't about "exercising due sensitivity," it's about an elected official seeing fit not to act like a total juvenile ass-hat in the name of America. We don't need someone who can't even act like a gentleman speak to our collective feelings about 9/11. I find I care less about how panties on the head plays among potential Muslim terrorists than I do about how a comment like "I, in no way, will ever apologize that someone put panties on the head of a 9/11 terrorist" plays in the civilized world.

Posted by Bill | June 6, 2008 10:31 AM

How do morons like Rohrabacher get elected? They get elected because most Americans don't care that many of the prisoners at Abu Ghraib, Baghram, Guantanmo etc are innocent of the charges against them...they don't care that a suspect does no equal a convict, and they don't care if we torture brown people. How do morons like Rohrabacher get elected? Because he represents some of the more reprehensible views of the electorate.

Posted by edsbowlingshoe | June 6, 2008 10:38 AM

""I, in no way, will ever apologize that someone put panties on the head of this 9/11 terrorist and treated him without respect," he said. "That man should have no respect.""

Because if you get caught doing things like that in a fraternity it's called hazing and you get in trouble. Punishments range from the fraternity being kicked off campus, students being expelled from school and in more extreme cases jail time. Worse things do happen on college campuses, but when they are caught red-handed they are punished.

Posted by JordanT | June 6, 2008 10:51 AM

MS,

That's because there are some very real political grievances in the Mideast in particular and across the Islamic world in general. For example, most Muslims see themselves in the Palestinians. The US and Isrealis have been playing games distablizing Lebanon since the Eisenhower adminsitration (and thats not just handing out cash). Then there was the nice little coup, organized by the CIA, which overthrew Mosadeqg and reinstated the Shah. Lots of this goes back into the 19th century. The important upshot is not that there are some people who will fight us no matter what, but as Trigger pointed out that a lot of folks in the Islamic world have little reason to extend cheap good will towards us and our friends.

SLC, with settlements come all the consequences of settlements (I know, thats another thread, but its a point that Rohrabacher might usefully atttend to as well).

Posted by djeri | June 6, 2008 10:53 AM

How do morons like Rohrabacher get elected?

By being from Orange County. In America, he wouldn't stand a chance...

Posted by Roddy McCorley | June 6, 2008 11:06 AM

And MS, note that what made Rohrabacher's comments particularly infuriating, like Rush before him, is that the prisoners were physically tortured, with dogs, beatings, deprivation of heat, stress positions (let alone stuff I have heard about but not sure has been confirmed, like sodomizing children with objects).

The panties stuff was just the flashier side of the grotesque evil, and focus on it by conservatives simply allows them to ignore the fact that the United States tortured prisoners. Because they prefer fake patriotism over a real love of their country.

Posted by glennn | June 6, 2008 12:46 PM

Not that I agree with Rohrabacher but honestly this is not something I will lose much sleep over. As the post implies, worse things happen in college dorm rooms all over country(let alone in American prisons). On my outrage meter people being tortured to death just isnt that significant.
Posted by MS

You are aware that panties being put on someone's head is, in fact, one of the more mild illegal and immoral activities happening to people, some of whom haven't even been charged with a crime or were suspected of anything related to terrorism in the first place, right? Just so we're clear about what you don't find significant.

Posted by Cyrus | June 6, 2008 12:51 PM

True or false? During Thursday's hearing, Dana Rohrabacher uttered the word "panties" 35 times.
True. At one point he seemed to be arousing himself with the repetition.
False. He only said "panties" eight times. Still, that's may be a single-session record for a congressman saying "panties."

Find out the truth at http://www.236.com/news/2008/06/06/quick_quiz_dana_rohrabacher_6985.php.

Posted by eliana | June 6, 2008 1:05 PM

Not that we should not exercise due sensitivity but it just seems it is extremely easy to "inspire violence" in the middle east.

By, for example, invading it with a large foreign army which has killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. It was certainly extremely easy for the Bush regime to inspire that kind of violence.

Posted by Stefan | June 6, 2008 1:09 PM

"If we don't engage in fraternity-style pranks against suspected terrorists, then the terrorists have won."
An atrios-worthy statement. Well played.

Posted by slag | June 6, 2008 1:09 PM

I thought this was going to be an Anatomy of a Murder post.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | June 6, 2008 1:12 PM

Not that I agree with Rohrabacher but honestly this is not something I will lose much sleep over. As the post implies, worse things happen in college dorm rooms all over country....

College students are routinely against their will held captive and then attacked by vicious guard dogs, beaten senseless, tortured with ropes and chains, forcibly drowned, shocked with electricity, sodomized with foreign objects and tortured to death?

What colleges are these exactly? Frankly, I think if Abu Ghraib like conditions were that common in our nation's universities we might have heard something about it, or at the least a few parents might have voiced some complaints to the dean.

Posted by Stefan | June 6, 2008 1:16 PM

According to the New Yorker, the Pentagon has admitted it has photos of at least one female prisoner being raped by a male American soldier at Abu Ghraib. To dismiss her rape as just panties on a guy's head is just sick. The Red Cross estimated that at least 70% of prisoners at Abu Ghraib were just at the wrong place at the wrong time.

Posted by Reality Man | June 6, 2008 1:39 PM

Ah, Abu al Rohrabacher. Methinks the muj doth protest too much.

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | June 6, 2008 2:05 PM

"let alone stuff I have heard about but not sure has been confirmed, like sodomizing children with objects)."

Oh, they were confirmed. What they haven't been is released to the public. If they were, the Bush administration would have fallen by now, and most of the Pentagon brass including Rumsfeld would be in The Hague.

Various Congress scum have seen the videos. Sy Hersh has seen them and reported children screaming.

Yes, our wonderful, brave, honest, sincere US troops torture children.

When they aren't simply gunning them down with sniper bullets or fifty caliber machine guns or dropping napalm - excuse me, incendiary agents - on them or simply blowing them to shredded bits with 500-lb bombs dropped on civilian neighborhoods.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | June 7, 2008 6:08 AM