Let's not pretend that the phrase "un-American" means nothing more innocuous than: "practices that typically happen in other places but not commonly in the U.S."

That's a phrase that has a long, pernicious history and packs a big punch. It's meant to convey that the act which bears that label is some sort of ugly and even severe betrayal of core American values, something unpatriotic even.
— GlennGreenwald

I didn't think Glenn was old enough to remember the House Un-American Activities Committee. Now those were the good times. Their excesses became so egregious that Harry Truman is said to have called it the "most un-American thing in the country today."

Glenn has this one exactly right. "Un-American" doesn't just mean something that people who aren't Americans do.

... there is no longer such a thing as the "moral majority" — all we have now is extreme and irresponsible fringes and an amoral center.

Ultimately, the goal is to identify a mix of detention-related options that are lawful, sustainable and that best advance our strategic goals.

This would seem to be an admission that this is not about "justice" nor even "the law", but about "strategy". In short, it is an attempt to find a "lawful" way to "detain" those who disagree with our politics and policies, in other words, political prisoners — "Enemies of the State". It reeks of Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia, of Gulags and Konzentrationslager. It is what we fought WW II and the Cold War to stop.

Why does "mix of detention-related options" remind me so strongly of "Weapons of Mass Destruction-related program activities"?

[We'll just leave FDR's preventive detention of some 120,000 Americans of Japanese descent, about two-thirds of which were US citizens, out of the discussion. I don't think Obama would even get the dubious distinction of being the first president to legalize indefinite detention out of it.]

Your first and second talking points have been answered extremely well and I have nothing to add. However:

Third, yes, I know polls show world opinion is against us "torturing." It's an easy grandstanding point to make, especially since it is directed at the big bad USA. But this "world" includes the likes of Russia, China, Cuba, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Iran, etc., so excuse me if I fail to take their moral posturing seriously.

The point that you are so spectacularly determined to miss is that the rest of the world no longer feels any need to take the US's moral posturing seriously. You are still unwilling to spare any of your goose sauce for the gander. Most people find it easy to see through the "do as I say, not as I do" sham of US posturing on human rights. Very succinctly, faith must be accompanied by good works. Torture is not a good work, anytime, anywhere. Or, as the UN Convention against Torture puts it, "No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat or war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture." What particular part of "no exceptional circumstances whatsoever" do you have trouble understanding?

Finally, I must say it takes a certain gall to preen and moralize about actions that may be the reason you sleep safely in your beds and tap away at your keyboards today. The men and women involved in the interrogations of KSM, Zubaida, Nashiri, etc., deserve not jail but medals for what they did

Yes, medals — I should think the Iron Cross First Class with oak-leaf cluster would be appropriate.

and, frankly, anyone who would even hesitate to throw a piece of garbage like KSM into the dunk tank or keep him up past his bedtime to secure information that could save thousands of lives is not being moral but, frankly, is a moral idiot.
— mikebuzz

It's not about what they are, mikey, it's about what we are, or rather what we are supposed to be. You still don't seem to be able to grasp the concept of "no exceptional circumstances whatsoever". Compromising moral principles out of fear is moral cowardice. You have not only branded yourself a moral coward but you have justified your moral cowardice with the same defense that moral cowards have used throughout the ages — your fear.

When I hear that pharse, I think of the only definition that I understood it to mean in my tiny girl mind: that this was the term used for when the ruler of a village got to rape the new bride to be.
— Sherrie

No, you're thinking of droit du seigneur (or as applied to the late Nelson Rockefeller, doit du seigneur [http://www.christers.net/veeps/rockefeller-bird.html]). But you're right, all these French aphorisms look pretty much the same and they are completely interchangeable. Noblesse oblige, droit de seigneur, plus ça change, je ne sais quoi, et plusieurs autres can be used anywhere without regard to meaning or context.

Anyway, noblesse oblige is the motto of the National Honor Society (at least it was when I was in high school, longer ago than I care to admit; quite likely it was abandoned as an unnecessary anachronism sometime during the Reagan administration), which I always thought was somewhat arrogant and condescending of them. Sort of one step behind "let them eat cake".

One should perhaps recall that among the successors of Charlemagne (Charles the Great) were Charles the Fat, Charles the Bald, and Charles the Simple.