"Star Trek" Android Guard Torture

Maybe it's just because it's the end of the day. No doubt, I'm thickheaded. But I just don't get this.

Excerpts:

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Republican congressional leaders said Tuesday they are asking committees to investigate the possible leak of classified information about secret U.S. prisons for suspected terrorists overseas.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and House Speaker Dennis Hastert said the disclosure, first reported last week in The Washington Post, could damage national security. Hastert, R-Illinois, and Frist, R-Tennessee, have asked the chairmen of the House and Senate intelligence committees to look into the origin of the disclosure.

"If accurate, such an egregious disclosure could have long-term and far-reaching damaging and dangerous consequences, and will imperil our efforts to protect the American people and our homeland from terrorist attacks," the lawmakers wrote in a letter requesting the investigation.

The Post reported November 2 that top al Qaeda suspects were being held for questioning "at a Soviet-era compound in Eastern Europe" and other locations around the world.

Hmmmm. So, whoever leaked the obviously false word that we're holding people in secret, recycled-East-bloc CIA torture prisons somehow endangered national security, even though there's no truth to it. Right. I guess I'd better keep quiet, then, about the squadrons of secret space alien UFOs that the gummint is operating out of Area 51. I don't want to endanger any national security. I don't want Senator Frist and Congressperson Hastert investigating me (to say nothing of Emperor Palpatine!).

President Bush, while in Panama on Monday, said flatly, "We do not torture."

Okay, that's clear enough. Never mind those Abu Ghraib photos. You didn't really see those, and neither did I. Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain -- I AM THE GREAT AND POWERFUL OZ!!! Alrighty, then. That settles that. Ten-four, good buddy.

The GOP leaders' move comes as the White House tries to oppose a Senate-approved measure that explicitly bars "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment" of prisoners in U.S. custody.

The White House has threatened to veto a $440 billion Pentagon spending bill if it includes that measure, which is backed by Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, a onetime prisoner of war who was tortured by his North Vietnamese captors.

So, let's see. There aren't any secret CIA torture prisons in former East bloc territory, so just shut up about them, lest you imperil National Security. And we do not torture, so it would be just awful if the Senate forbade us to torture.

I think I saw something like this several times in the old, original "Star Trek" TV series. Isn't this where the bad guy's android guards are supposed to blow up under the unbearable pressure of logical contradiction? Lay off, Mr. Spock! My circuits are overheating already!