Eugene Volokh links approvingly to Glenn Reynolds, who approvingly quotes Kim du Toit (to whom I will not link), regarding recently reported mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners:

If they're found guilty, I hope these assholes go to jail.

Because when the Islamist pricks do this kind of thing to our soldiers, I want to be able to go after them with a vengeful spirit.

Why not just hope those assholes go to jail because what they did was morally wrong? By adding the qualification, it seems as if the only reason Profs. Volokh and Reynolds are outraged is that the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners (or “alleged” mistreatment, as Prof. Volokh writes) will no longer let Americans hold the moral high ground in the ongoing war in Iraq.

To be fair, the quote Reynolds pulls from Citizen Smash does recognizes the wrongness of mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners. But the quote from du Toit is the most prominent one in Reynolds’s post.

UPDATE: More on Reynolds's reaction from Jim Henley. Henley points out that "[i]t takes four sentences for Glenn Reynolds to start whining about John Kerry in his attempt to condemn the Abu Ghraib abuses," and also notes that Dan Drezner "devotes most of his passion to resenting that Arabs have gotten indignant about it."