NOBODY from either side of the discussion expressed a desire to see anybody tortured.

Why oh Why – what a perfect bookend to such a discussion, your comments make.

This is what they said at their official site, a few days ago.

http://www.icrc.org/web/eng/siteeng0.nsf/html/united-states-detention-faq-240209

Anyone want to bet that Mr Danner simply doesn’t care that he is interfering with the Red Cross’s ability to provide oversight?

What is Law, and what is it’s purpose? The present working definition seems to be that law is a mechanism used by the state to prevent bad outcomes and ensure good ones. Thus, when extralegal methods become more attractive, the switch is easily made. The people in charge are above the law, since they believe that they have created it from nothing to serve their purposes.

A better, more historically Christian definition would be to say that Law is a limited human attempt to replicate God’s character. God embodies truth and consistency, so Law must first concern itself with those qualities before ever even thinking about potential outcomes. Justice, which might actually be said to be an outgrowth of truth and consistency, is a public good, but it isn’t a good so trivial that it can be traded off on the market of potential outcomes.

It is better for some people to die than for the whole community to be deprived of consistent Law. That’s the thinking that made this country a good place to live, that’s the thinking that’s implied in Constitutional oaths of office, and that’s the thinking that would have prevented the American Government’s torture problem from ever developing.

Works for me.’

Reliable if corroborated, which it was. I understand your point and it sure looks a bit strange as you describe it but the situation is not exactly as you describe it. No one simply took a terrorists word that he was mistreated.

Then you get invited up into a helicopter, and they grab a tied up guy and hold him in the door, and begin asking him questions, until he pauses for breath, then they drop him out, and grab the next guy in line… …and they may or may not come back down with any prisoners.

Remember the unctious little Vietnamese officer who hands you the pistol, and asks if you want to put a bullet in the head of the prisoner?

Remember the VA Therapy rooms where you heard these stories, and the stories of the rape that ended with a bullet in the head of a 14 year old girl?

Philip, if you are real, then I respect you. But you are blurring the distinction between criminal acts and the Bush-hating crowd who are trying to invent a picture of a criminal Government waging a genicidal war against Israel-haters.

Go stand beside McCain, or Wesley Clark, or Colin Powell. But DON’T stand with liars and haters.

I thought: Yeah, right. Like you gave Bush a chance, calling him a vote-thief and a stupid public speaker, in the hours before his swearing-in ceremony. Like right after 9-11 when we thought there should be a pause, and we all pull together, but instead you were pretty sure Bush actually bombed the towers himself. Like we all laughed when Whoopie compared the President of the United States to her pubic hair.

When I hear the slogans, I remember the comedian who said you could just assign a number to different jokes. Then someone shouts out “42″ and nobody laughs, because some people just can’t tell a joke.

“Bush 41″, and people laugh. “Bush 43″ and people laugh, and curse.

But there’s a lot of room for factual and logical error when you hide behind those coded jokes.

“…a copy of the Red Cross report on torture…”

Is that the same outfit that was so upset about Sadaam’s boys running entire junior high school classes of girls through their rape-rooms? About hundreds of thousands of dead bodies in Iraqi mass-graves? Must have been a different outfit.

“Abu Ghraib was amateur hour.” Excuse me? Abu Ghraib was a criminal act, that we QUICKLY corrected. Was there evidence of a “cover-up”? There better have been. We are at WAR and that information would help the ENEMY if some US-hating person were to release it before we had a chance to bring to trial the people who did this. It is everything that decent Americans hate. Only people who hate us will believe that we condone such actions.

“Mark Danner’s 14,000-word scoop… Read it anyway.” I read EVERY word.

“The similarity of the prisoners accounts’ attests to their veracity.” Unless of course, they were coached by the same crooked attornies. Unless, of course, we believe there was “rendition”, in which case each prisoner would have very DIFFERENT experiences, if interrogated by different countries.

Do I believe BUSH when he says, “We don’t torture.”? Yes, I do. Supported by the fact that you, and other Bush-hating people, can ask THEM questions now, some years later.

How many words did Mr Danner expend in describing them having their heads pounded against a wall? Are you as upset by a 15-yearold girl’s self-inflicted scars on her forearms, as you are about the non-existent scars on these people’s faces? I have permanent, lifetime scars on my face from highschool football helmets.

Does McCain believe they were tortured? Yes. I don’t like him, but I respect him as a decent American. Does his opinion make my government criminal? No. Does he hold that opinion in order to aid the enemies of the US? No.

You, and Mr Danner, and Mr Leahy, need to take a lesson from Mr McCain.