BEER, BREASTS, AND EXCRUCIATING AGONY

Over the weekend, William Saletan had an article at Slate about a new pain weapon:

...Three weeks ago, the U.S. armed forces tested it on volunteers at an Air Force base in Georgia. You can watch the video on a military Web site. Three colonels get zapped, along with an Associated Press reporter. The beam is invisible, but its effects are vivid. Two dozen airmen scatter. The AP guy shrieks and bolts out of the target zone. He says it felt like heat all over his body, as though his jacket were on fire.

The feeling is an illusion. No one is harmed. The beam's energy waves penetrate just one-sixty-fourth of an inch into your body, heating your skin like microwaves. They inflame your nerve endings without actually burning you. This could be the future of warfare: less bloodshed, more pain....

I'm not sure how I feel about this. On the one hand, all military and police weapons cause serious suffering, and Saletan assures us that this one does virtually no long-term damage and drastically reduces collateral damage. On the other hand, I can imagine this being repurposed -- used not just once, to incapacitate, but repeatedly, as an instrument of torture that has the advantage of doing no physical damage. In fact, I can't imagine it not being used that way (and I can't imagine that not doing long-term psychological damage).

Typical liberal, right, with my silly qualms? I suppose I should be more like John Tabin of The American Spectator's blog. For him, it's all very simple:

If you don't think this is totally awesome, I'm not really sure how you can possibly be male.

Ah, the moral clarity of the right.