Trade Gap

The Gap has learned that an Indian factory it buys clothing from uses child labor, a practice the company has made an effort to avoid, by monitoring vendors' factories to whatever degree they can from a distance. The company's reaction:

The smock blouse will not be offered for sale in the company's 3,000 stores around the world, Gap said, and instead will be destroyed.

Pulling the child-made item from their stores and thereby refusing to profit from exploitation of children: right move. Destroying perfectly serviceable clothing: wrong move. Rather than adding them to landfill, how about donating the blouses to needy kids in India? Let some small good come out of this. How about it, Gap?

War Heroes

About a week ago, a group of veterans of World War II got together. These were the men who, in so much secret that few have spoken of their work in the half-century since, interrogated Nazi prisoners. They were able to obtain the secrets that were critical to our victory over Hitler. Bound to have useful advice for our current leaders about how to wrench information from prisoners in our current war, one would think. But clearly, they've not been asked. Because at their reunion, here's the kind of thing they had to say:

"During the many interrogations, I never laid hands on anyone," said George Frenkel, 87, of Kensington. "We extracted information in a battle of the wits. I'm proud to say I never compromised my humanity."

Our current interrogators can't say the same, a fact that did not go unremarked by these men:

Several of the veterans, all men in their 80s and 90s, denounced the controversial techniques. And when the time came for them to accept honors from the Army's Freedom Team Salute, one veteran refused, citing his opposition to the war in Iraq and procedures that have been used at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

"I feel like the military is using us to say, 'We did spooky stuff then, so it's okay to do it now,' " said Arno Mayer, 81, a professor of European history at Princeton University.

When Peter Weiss, 82, went up to receive his award, he commandeered the microphone and gave his piece.

"I am deeply honored to be here, but I want to make it clear that my presence here is not in support of the current war," said Weiss.

What's to be learned from these veterans? Of course, that the methods of torture that our current government has claimed are the only way to prise information out of prisoners--well, they aren't the only ways. These guys managed to do a pretty good job without waterboarding anybody. The values that they fought to preserve were the values they managed to retain even in the interrogation of the enemy.

These men are heroes. By sacrificing the values that these men stood for and continue to hold dear, by taking instead the course that the Nazis themselves took, the Bush administration is betraying them and betraying us.