This is disgusting, coming as it does on the heels of the news that Maher Arar was kidnapped and tortured for ten months, and reportedly confessed under duress to crimes of which he was entirely innocent.

Let's be clear that torture is not a search for truth, because the truth and his personal innocence did not save Mr. Arar.

It is sick revenge and a perversion performed upon helpless subjects by sadistic sociopaths who have no business calling themselves Americans.

Anyone who does not stand against these barbaric practices is just as sick and perverted as the torturers themselves.

Just so we're clear, I am a United States Army veteran and my patriotism is beyond question. Click the link.

The idea of civilized warfare is an oxymoron. Uncivilized morons start wars. There you have it in a nutshell.

Lets see, making terrorists uncomfortable,thousands dying. Tough choice.

I, too, am a veteran -- retired. I disagree with Repack Rider. War is an ugly side of life, the hidden side of freedom. Without a strong military and outfitted with the appropriate tools, we would be unable to beat terrorism. They use the compassion of Americans against them. They know how our court system of "rights" works and they use it against us. Let there be no mistake -- they are cruel, dangerous, and sadistic. They would kill you in a heartbeat if they could with a smile on their face and praise to Allah on their lips. The soldiers who interrogate them are skilled professionals -- not "sadistic sociopaths". Be thankful for your freedom, Repack Rider. If not for the brave men and women in uniform you wouldn't still have the freedom of speech which you exhibit now. If the terrorists were in control of this country/government you would be executed for daring to speak against them.

Hayden's grandmother would confess to a terror plot if "waterboarded".

This is not about information. It's about intimidation. It's a psyop against the "free" people of the world. DRTC = Disorientation, Regression, Transference, Compliance. We are all complicit.

Wake up Americans!

When will this nightmare end?

I've got to hand it to the Democrats. The strategy of allowing the Republicans to "thrash out" their differences on the treatment and prosecution of detainees has played out exactly as planned...for the Republicans. Don't let anyone convince you that you can go to the well too often...that is if you are a Republican and your opponent is a fully inept Democratic Party.

Amidst a trend of favorable polling data and a firestorm of speeches by the President to refocus the voting public on their fear of terrorism, the Democrats stood in the background for the past two weeks and watched what the GOP will call the difficult work of creating legislation that preserves our commitment to civil liberties while at the same time providing our determined President with the essential tools needed to pursue those who seek to kill us all.

OK, perhaps I'm being too harsh. There is a possibility that in the past two weeks the Democrats were able to devise their sixth iteration of a campaign slogan and strategy to roll out with less than 50 days to the election. Perhaps they could call it "Fifty States, Fifty Days...But Never Fifty Percent"! It's catchy, it's succinct, and it may well be accurate come November 8th.

The Constitution says loudly and clearly that there shall be no cruel or unusual punishment and no infringement of judicial by administrative or legislative rights. So! What gives?

Repack, I don’t see anyone questioning your patriotism, and I’d like to personally thank you for serving our country in our nation’s armed forces. But the simple fact of the matter, as Brian Ross has stated in other forums, is that the six techniques advocated for by the CIA do work very effectively. Ross has stated that 14 terrorists have been interrogated using these methods, and all 14 have given up useful intelligence that has saved American lives as a result. None of these terrorists have been permanently injured using these techniques. Not one.

The White House and Congress have merely asked that these effective techniques be continued, to save the lives of our friends and neighbors.

Most Americans have a Jacksonian view of dealing with our nation’s enemies. We will afford every right and privilege afforded by the laws of war to an honorable enemy soldier captured on the field of battle. If you fight America honorably, we will treat your honorably, even though you are our enemy. At the same time, if our enemy dismisses the agreed upon common decencies and rights, there are no legal moral or ethical reasons that we should treat them with kidd gloves at the expense of our own lives.

If our enemies are dishonorable, attacking innocent men, woman, and children instead of legitimate targets, then our gloves will come of as well, and we have the right to engage you in total war with all the methods at our disposal to defeat you. And yet, the United States has conducted an exceedingly restrained and honorable war against terrorists and the nations that support terrorism.

Even though we have the unquestioned capability, we have not launched the large-scale carpet bombing campaigns against cities and civilian populations that we did in the Second World War. We use precision-guided weaponry whenever possible, with protection of even enemy-sympathetic citizenry always at the forefront of our mission planning. Our honored military veterans are fully aware of the great pains we take to minimize civilian casualties, even though the pains we take to ensure the safety of innocents often puts our soldiers lives at risk in exchange. We have without a doubt, and without contradiction, the most lethal and compassionate military force that this planet has ever seen.

But even though we are compassionate, we recognize that to survive as this great and compassionate nation, we cannot be weak and cowardly, as many would clearly like us to be.

The techniques we use are unpleasant and coercive, but they are not torture, and it is both dishonest and disheartening to see our own media attempting to blur the line in such a way to make all such life-saving intelligence gathering techniques a crime.

By their own repeated, long-standing and well-documented series of abuses of basic human rights and dignities, the terrorists we have captured have forfeited any right for human treatment, and yet we consistently treat them better than we do domestic criminals in our prisons and jails.

We are clearly on moral ground here, no matter how willing many people in our own nation are willing to give that ground away.

Check mate. We lost the war on terror. Terror (Fear) won and the US became as extremist and inhumane as our enemy. Water boarding is torture no matter what name you put on it. The US torturing muslims is the the best recruitment campaign for AlQaida I now understand why OBL smiles on the Aljazeera videos.

Bob Owens -

You make no distinction between a terrorist and a suspect. People are innocent until proven guilty under the due process of law.

With your frame, interrogators can decided someone is guilty, and coerce him to talk.

The result will be false confessions.

Waterboarding is TORTURE, period. The only reason this thuggish adminstration wants it legalized is to keep their sorry asses out of jail when they are finally kicked out of office. Anyone else supporting this disgusting practice is probably suffering from testosterone poisoning of the brain.

All of the legislators who backed this bill or even voted for it, should have first been made to experience this water boarding, and then decide for themselves what that constitutes.

I too am a veteran. I wonder why the vets who approve torture do not mention that our allowing the CIA to torture suspects now gives every terrorist group or country in the world the right to torture our soldiers whenever they want. That's one reason why the United States supported the Geneva Conventions. For the small price of not torturing other combatants, the US could have reasonable insurance that its own soldiers wouldn't be tortured. Ignorance or denial of this reality comes from continuing to believe that the US is all-powerful and that no other country or group would dare challenge us. Get real. Get moral.

Eric,
As has been stataed, these tactics have been useful in getting info out of the top 14 Al Queda suspects in custody. This info has saved lives.

Of the 6 tactics, water boarding is the only one that comes close to "torture" and it still leaves no physical injury or harm to the suspect. Also it is only used as a last resort.

According to Brian Ross, water boarding cracked Khalid Sheik Mohammed and let to info that disrupted a plot to crash airliners into the library tower in LA.

Also, these tactics are not used indiscriminantly on "innocent until proven guilty" persons. They are used on known high level terrorists that have info that can save lives.

I'm sure you can understand the difference.

What is missing in all the above discussions is the bigger picture. Justifying what we do to terrorists because they are terrorists is not the appropriate approach. As your parents told you growing up, two wrongs don't make a right. Stooping to their level, i.e. torturing detainees, means we have intentionally abandoned our moral standing. How can we justify telling other nations about human rights if we don't practice it ourselves. I find it interesting that people with military backgrounds understand this (Powell, Warner, Graham) and those who never served (Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld)don't get it.

Our War on Terrorism is being waged like our War on Drugs and we all know how that turned out. In both we are fighting the supply and not the demand. What Bush's policy should incorporate is why people are willing to be suicide bombers and try to address that. That is not to say we should not go after OBL and his henchmen but solely taking the approach providing democracy at the barrel of gun surely will not work.

Is it clear to everyone yet that McCauin is a hypocrite? He's always so eager to talk like an independant more concerend with what's right that with party politics. Then he winds up time again siding with Bush against his own publicly declared principals.

Remember, we only torture the bad guys. Just ask Canadian Maher Arar...

"We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was legal."

Martin Luther King, Jr.

I believe that the deal President Bush has struck is a betrayal of the America I believe in.That abandoning the rule of law and giving the President the freedom to interpret the Geneva Conventions any way he sees fit is an open invitation for Executive abuse and that providing immunity to those responsible for past human rights abuses is a miscarrage of Justice.The exemption from prosecution those who authorize treatment traditionally considered torture is sure to impress the world of our high moral character. Stripping detainees of access to US courts will also color
us in ways as yet to be deterimined.DO NOT LET THIS HAPPEN.I am an honorably discharged veteran of the Vietnam War.