Then, we'll see what the CIA, and special ops do with the highest value targets and terrorists. We'll see how the State Department operates in Baghdad without the logistical support of Blackwater.

The only problem with a Hillary presidency is that she also gets to pick federal judges for four years. (Can you just imagine a "Judge Gorelick" !?!) And there's the issue as to whether, under a President Hillary, the Seymour Hershes will write about the "torture" policies of a Democrat president, or whether they will content themselves with writing books about the the bad old days of the Bush presidency. We know what Sidney Blumenthal will and won't be writing about.

I won't worry about Blumenthal in any event. I just want the terrorists stopped, and so far I like the job that President Bush and Vice President Cheney have done.

Oh, Elephantboy, you deliver the ironic reverse humor like no other comedian. Keep it coming! No, wait, stop. My sides are aching from laughing.

Be careful what you wish for, eleboy.

Because with the current dictatorial powers of the executive at her fingertips, Hillary could have a lot of people in the Bush administration tied to the waterboards somewhere in Eastern Bumfuckistan. Maybe they'll come and get you too. I'll sign up for that detail.

-- Garry Owen

The ridiculousness of this is worth noting. Which former Clinton officials have been persecuted by the Bush Administration? Sandy Berger? Ha! Who among ordinary Americans have been targeted? Lynne Stewart? Ha!

Here's what Garry Owen's comment reveals; for the MoveOn/Angry Left/Bush Derangment Syndrome crowd, the 'enemy' is the Republican Party, not terrorists. The angry left doesn't dream of Bin Laden in the crosshairs of Hellfire missile; the angry left fantacizes about a war crimes trial for Bush and Cheney.

Positively. Sick.

I would insist that President Bush, Dick Cheney, and other members of this administration answer the following questions:

If your child were captured by a foreign government on the battlefield of Iraq or Afghanistan, would you be at peace knowing they would be treated exactly -- no better, no worse -the way we have treated men and women captured by our government? Would you be happy with them being granted the exact same rights we have granted to detainees at Guantanamo? Would you be proud of the moral standard the U.S. has set and thus set the stage for the rest of the world to follow for the treatment of all human beings, friends or enemies?

-- heyjude

If we were takling about "troops" on the kind of "battlefield" that the Fourth Geneva Convention contmplated, we wouldn't be having a conversation about "torture" at all. (Of course, there were some terrible abuses, killings, etc., of enemy troops by American military personnel in WWII, but no one called for Roosevelt or Truman to be impeached. It was a war. War is hell. We were attacked, we went to war, we won. Some, among our many thousands of fighting troops, behaved badly. Most behaved brilliantly, and honorably. Does this sound at all familiar to any of you?)

I presume that any coalition military officer who is captured by terrorists will be treated abominably, no matter what we do in our interrogation techniques. Because that is what the Islamofascist terrorists do. They behead people, on videotape. They burn bodies and dance around them, on videotape. The plant bombs in police stations, in crowded markets, underneath power lines, near civil government installations, outside UN buildings. You want "rules of engagement"? Those are their rules of engagement.

...

So then that's what we should do too? We're no better than the ones we deplore? If they're "enemies of civilization" and we act like them, doesn't that make us enemies of civilization too?

So much for America setting the standard to which others should live.

-- Lynx

Wait a minute! I didn't raise this issue -- one of the Salon faithful did, and all I did was to point out that our enemies in the war on terror have no rules of engagement, no Geneva Convention, etc.

And, no, we DON'T act like them! Did you need me to tell you that? You all have been in the echo chamber waaaay too long!

What happened to the Abu Ghraib perpetrators? We punished them. What happened at Haditha? We investigated. We have a free press; when abuses, mistakes, errors of judgment, atrocities occur, we have reports, investigations, and sometimes criminal prosecutions. What happens to the suicide bombers, the murderers of Daniel Pearl, the barbarians planting bombs beside roads? Are they investigated, reported on, punished?

Or are they rewarded by Allah, praise be unto the name of the prophet?

I wonder how many people out in the world at large are still impressed by the Nobel Committee's choices.

The American right quit being impressed a long time ago.

Just asking.

That Al Gore is the "true" 43rd President of the United States, and that global warming requires urgent public policy changes.

This is all the same kind of evidence-based "science" that gave us birth trauma litigation, silicone gel breast implant diseases, Bendectin birth defects, Erin Brockovich, "The Population Bomb", John Edwards' miracle cures from stem-cell research, and so many other mass-hysteria movements.

Liberals can say whatever they want to about us Conservatives. For my own part ("creationism" is not in my theology), I will have none of it. For me, "Junk Science" and the rejection of science is a uniquely Liberal preserve.