Geese and Ganders

"--Torture or other acts of violence serious enough to be considered comparable to murder, torture, mutilation and cruel or inhuman treatment.

--Willful or outrageous acts of personal abuse done to humiliate or degrade someone in a way so serious that any reasonable person would ''deem the acts to be beyond the bounds of human decency, such as sexual or sexually indecent acts undertaken for the purpose of humiliation, forcing the individual to perform sexual acts or to pose sexually, threatening the individual with sexual mutilation.

--Acts intended to denigrate the religion, religious practices, or religious objects of an individual."

The above is from a New York Times online report today and is a list of what the President's most recent Executive Order prohibits the CIA from doing to those who come into its hands.

The White House spokesman declined to explain what the President considered to be torture.

This executive order's timing is interesting given the flak that Iran is getting for treatment of detainees in its Evin Prison. Notably absent from the protests to the Iranian government over the treatment is that of the United States. I skimmed five or six stories about the prison and treatment of prisoners (including U.S. citizens) and could find nary a word of reaction from a U.S. Government official.

This maybe because our government doesn't have the moral standing to condemn Iran for what the United States has done in Guantanamo.