By L.P. LUPO

BETHANY BEACH, Del. — Remember the Sensitive Guys of the ’90’s?

Look who’s sensitive now.

First there was this breaking news: “TORTURE!” Oops. No torture.

Then there was the pervert’s convention at the Abu Ghraib prison, news of which was released by the Pentagon, investigated by the Army, but, nevertheless, scooped by CBS as a prisoner-abuse “scandal.”

Panties on the head, a Camp Minnewanka-like prank, is abuse when it comes to the ultra-sensitive Jihad fanatics.”

Then there was the Koran in the Can scandal. Oops again. And sorry this time. How sorry? Well, even though there is no KIC “abuse,” the Washington Post “confirms” incidents of Koran “mishandling.”

So the definition of war crimes descends from “TORTURE!” to Koran mishandling. This was on the same day that a suicide bomber killed a dozen people at a Shiite Shrine, but I digress.

Question: Why do we need military guidelines on how to handle the Koran? Does the military have guidelines on how to handle the Old Testament, the New Testament, Das Kapital or the New York Review of Books? Or do Jews, Christians, communists and progressives not have the same sensitivities as suicide bombers?

Let’s investigate. We are a nation of investigations.

Newsweek’s bogus Koran story begets an investigation of mishandling headed by a General. He will find that a mess sergeant handled pork sausage without changing latex gloves before handling the Koran.

Pretty soon we will have an army fighting the war and one of equal strength investigating it. They will investigate how many rounds is acceptable to fire in a given situation, whether the Italian journalist’s car slowed or did not slow in approaching the checkpoint, whether it is okay to put Saddam/Clinton briefs on prisoners’ heads but not Lynndie England/Paris Hilton thongs, and above all, how to handle a Koran to the tune of Rex Harrison’s “How to Handle a Woman.”

A second-level cottage industry exists to investigate the investigators: Amnesty International singing “In the Gulag” to the tune of Elvis Presley’s “In the Ghetto.” Amnesty knows as much about the gulag as Elvis knew about the ghetto. And, of course, there is the ACLU, the Mikey of all organizations. It doesn’t like anything.

What is most striking is that the people who insist religion should have no role in government policy (the ACLU for one, the Washington Post’s Richard Cohen for another) and who think the ecumenicals are creating a theocracy in America are the same ones showing this deep, deep concern about government policy toward Muslims. We would not want to hurt their feelings by bombing insurgent bomb factories during Ramadan, while they are out blowing up women and children in mosques.

Sure, Koran in the Can did not stand up (try flushing the Gutenberg Bible), and even the media called Newsweek a bad boy. But that does not keep them from circling their printers in crypto defense by backtracking to Koran mishandling.

And when that does not pan out, CNN is sure to break the story of the latest horrific abuse: “CIA interrogator wrinkles the pages of a detainee’s Batman comic book; 12 Killed in Riots in Kabul.”