I am convinced that mayhem is prejudicial, that good evidence has been distorted by the climate of torture and torture itself, and that even the innocent victims of it are now our enemies.

Just how are we to bring them into a courtroom?

How has their experience not been cruel and unusual already?

How should they not all go free?

And, can we release them into our own country?

What nation will now have them?

What reparations is our government prepared to pay for damages?

My questions are certainly not informed by legal constraints.

But can you address these, Glenn? What can be done to help the innocent, in particular? And what should be done with the guilty?

(I am as against cruel and inhuman treatment and torture as the next guy on this blog. It is disgusting and reprehensible. Aristotle said, "Torture doesn't work very well." The purpose of torture is the extraction of false confessions and the creation of propaganda -- for that, it works very well. Indeed, barbarism has survived for over 500 years for a very good reason: Torture is probably the very best way to distort the truth and then misinform the public.)

But what can we now do to resolve the problems created by Bush & Cheney?

Now we'll NEVER get rid of him! As soon as he has any reason to do so at all, he pisses off his left! The man's looking for Republican votes!

of frightened elitists in 2001, who flagrantly violated US Code and Treaty and made a deliberate war of occupation in Iraq for personal gain! A child can see that the Iraq Development maps from the Energy Taskforce of 2001 coupled with Cheney's Halliburton stock options were a specific plot and plan for the base satisfaction of his personal greed.

But torture for propaganda - not for national security at all - is too much. The time is now long past. If we do not prosecute Cheney and Bush, we will have acknowledged we are only lawless barbarians, telling a sad tale of the decay of our form of government. What is now required is prosecution by the Department of Justice - not partisan truth commissions, not Congressional investigations, not inquiries.

Unless we put our uniquely American judicial perspective on these matters and publicly criminalize the heinous work of the malefactors of our recent past, no proportional response to the next attack will be possible. Investigations, inquiries and commissions will be seen as trifling and impotent - symptomatic of our political depravity - if there is anyone left to read that history.

Have we no moral character left? Have we lost all perspective?

Direct from Cheney, the man who acknowledges ordering it, to Froomkin and Wilkerson - the arguments have been made, the rationales exposed for precisely what they are. That prosecution now in Federal court would exacerbate partisan political tensions and therefore be a bad thing to do is a novel argument that betrays a heaping full slate of hypocrisy for political expediency.

Failure to prosecute war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide, kidnapping, torture, 2nd degree capital murder, cruel and inhuman treatment - such failure to prosecute our own leaders, in particular, is unAmerican and is, itself, a war crime.

Arguments against full and complete prosecution of the Principals would make those individuals who would block such a full judicial airing complicit in those crimes.

Ken Gude has lost all sense of perspective: To argue that it is unpleasant or that the nation will not survive the backlash from despicable partisans like John Bolton who commands a very small sect of enablers is minimally sufficient.

Sentencing for premeditation will be a far worse problem than conviction; crimes committed were plotted and planned far in advance of any cause that can be considered just - in January 2001, according to former-Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill and others.

It's about time you had your own "mainstream" blog. Hopefully, your contributions will help Salon get some more advertising!

Best Wishes,

ez