THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

It once was the Spanish Inquisition, but that is pretty well dated by now. So now we don't expect the those who administer the forced feedings at America's Own Concentration Camp. We don't expect those who daily administer our latest torture program (waterboarding eat your heart out).

As of Friday, the military said, 68 captives were on hunger strike, down from a high of 106 amid apparently easing tensions for Ramadan, Islam’s holy month. Of the 68, 44 were designated for tube feedings of the type that the hip-hop recording artist who now goes by Yasiin Bey tried to portray in London last month in a demonstration organized by a British legal defense group.

Detention center troops interviewed this week expressed opinions ranging from resentment to indifference to the rapper’s stunt that put a spotlight on the forced-feedings that the world’s not allowed to see. Reporters have requested to observe tube feedings throughout the hunger strike but permission has not been granted.

So the question is: where does the truth lie? Is it the depiction in the viral video and the lawyers’ claim that their clients are being tortured? Or is it the insistence of the U.S. military that forced-feedings are intended to preserve life, not inflict pain.

Several guards in Branson’s military police unit got nasogastric feedings out of curiosity since deploying here two months ago, the sergeant said, “and took it like a champ.”

“It’s a life-saving tool if you ask me,” said Branson, whose troops deployed from Fort Bliss, Texas. “We see it every day and we know it’s not as bad as they make it out to be.”...

10 members of the Navy medical corps who do the feedings said in a series of interviews that they are proud of their service and pained by the portrayal that they are doing something inhumane. Detainees who don’t want the tube, they said, have the option to eat. But, as U.S. military medical forces, they are determined not to let them starve.

Even though those who worked for Torquemada were willing to let people starve, I am sure they were proud of their work as well.