Last week, musicians launched a campaign to demand that the United States military stop using their songs to psychologically break down its prisoners. The musicians were protesting against the US tactic of forcing detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay to listen to music played at ear- splitting volume without respite, sometimes for months on end.
While the use of popular music as a weapon of torture is hardly new - easy-listening radio stations have been doing it for years - the CIA displayed a surprising degree of lateral thinking in its choice of artists.
It goes without saying that the songs played most included numbers from Metallica, AC/DC, and Aerosmith, but there was evidence of a fiendish intelligence at work with the decision to bombard detainees with self- indulgent twaddle from David Gray and Don McLean, as well as grating children's anthems such as the theme to Sesame Street. Most masterly of all was the choice of Queen's We Will Rock You - a number that I have long argued, despite occasional death threats from readers, has a legitimate claim to the title of worst song ever written.
Nonetheless, one category of music was glaringly absent from the playlist. I refer, of course, to Christmas songs.
While detainees in Iraq say they were able to endure weeks of Britney Spears or Nine Inch Nails before cracking, I find a scant two minutes of exposure to Hall and Oates' Jingle Bell Rock while browsing the pants section at Farmers is all it takes to make me confess to having served as a weapons instructor at an al Qaeda training camp on the outskirts of Jalalabad.
It's puzzling that the CIA has failed to make use of this seasonal resource. Perhaps the awesome power of the Christmas song is, like nuclear fission, almost too unstable a force to harness. Most of us, for example, regard Heather Mills as karmic retribution for Paul McCartney's A Wonderful Christmas Time, yet I have seen some listeners merrily tapping their toes to this loathsome ditty. Similarly, there are reportedly people who can sit through Band Aid's Do They Know It's Christmas? without feeling remotely homicidal.
Even when they're not played at head-exploding volume into a prison cell, few songs are as psychologically disturbing as those written especially for Christmas. A prime example would be I Saw Mama Kissing Santa Claus, in which a young Michael Jackson witnesses his mother being sexually assaulted in a yuletide home invasion, or John Denver's Please Daddy (Don't Get Drunk This Christmas), in which a winsome seven- year-old implores his father not to pass out in a drunken stupor beneath the Christmas tree.
Self-disgust is, of course, the greatest weapon of all, and perhaps the CIA should make use of the fact that most of us have a Christmas song that we despise ourselves for secretly enjoying. I remain immune to the charms of Christmas songs sung by sheep, chipmunks, the Wombles or Cliff Richard - all much of a muchness, frankly - but have a shameful fondness for Jose Feliciano's Feliz Navidad. This is even more damning now that Feliz Navidad's lyrics ("I wanna wish you a merry Christmas/with lots of presents to make you happy") should clearly be read not as a cheerfully dipsy summary of festive hedonism, but as a thundering indictment of the rampant consumerism that got us into the mess we're now in.
I suspect I'd also enjoy Cyndi Lauper and the Hives' new A Christmas Duet, which contains possibly the filthiest Christmas lyrics ever recorded ("I bought no gift this year and I slept with your sister" is the only line that can be repeated here).
Sadly, the effectiveness of Christmas songs as weapons of torture is unlikley to be explored now that Barack Obama has vowed to close Guantanamo Bay. Although all is not lost: while many commentators were outraged that the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay were stripped of their human rights, it's hard to imagine anyone objecting if similar treatment was dished out to the creators of Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer and All I Want For Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth. Let's see how long it takes them to crack under an aural assault from Snoopy's Christmas.
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