And if you’re lucky, we’ll keep your eyeballs moist while we indoctrinate you.

Via Memeorandum, Glenn Greenwald writes: “What every American should be made to learn about the IG Torture Report.”

That’s my emphasis.

My first thought: yeah make them learn! Strap ‘em all down to those old schoolhouse desks with their eyes propped open and show them what they should know!

We’re the liberal elite, you stupid, stupid Americans! You’ll learn what we think you should learn, and you’ll like it!

Then I read his post. He wants every American to read the IG repots.

And…you know, that’s just fine with me. I wouldn’t be so dictatorial and thuggish as to suggest we make people read them, but I think it would be a great thing if everybody did.

Just look at some of the atrocities the report uncovers:

• Firing a handgun outside the interrogation room, with screaming and yelling, and dressing a guard up as a dead detainee;

• Using the sound of an electric drill to frighten a detainee;

• Blowing cigarette smoke in a detainee’s face.

I’m with Greenwald. I’d like to have every American read these reports, and I’d like every American to understand that the “detainees” are people who will gladly detonate explosives in marketplaces full of women and children; who will cut the head off a helpless captive; who will hide behind civilians when facing enemy troops.

I’m not going to MAKE them do that, you understand, because I’m not a jack-booted totalitarian like Greenwald. But I’d LIKE them to.

That the “detainees” would do such awful things if they could doesn’t justify bad behavior on our part, of course. But if Greenwald thinks the American public will come over to his side after reading and understanding these things, then he’s an idiot.

One more thing: John Hinderaker writes:

Having read the CIA report in its entirety, I am struck once again by how humane our treatment of captured terrorists was intended to be, and generally was. The handful of incidents highlighted by press accounts of the report came to light precisely because they were reported as deviations from the treatment of detainees that had been authorized by DOJ lawyers.