It is time for people to close the chapter on the Bush years and look to do good things to help our country..

If we don't prosecute any crimes that were committed, we can be certain that such crimes will be repeated the next time morally-deficient people manage to get into power. The willingness to commit such atrocities is a cancer that we must not not allow to take root in our country.

150 years ago, this country was torn by the debate over slavery. Proponents of the despicable practice of slavery argued that it was effective, and they produced substantial facts to support this argument.

The most-admired president in our country's history rejected these arguments, and also rejected substantial arguments that the conflict would be painful and costly. It was painful and costly. We had a civil war to resolve the conflict, but I think our country is better for having done it.

The conservative stance on torture suggests that conservatives don't give a rat's ass about the moral issues of abortion, but rather that they merely found it a convenient "wedge" issue they could use to fire up their base.

...eventually it becomes a tool of fear to oppress and control civilian populations, and stops being about information at all.

Yes, but if you say it's about information then you get to skip all that messy "due process" stuff and do it right away. All you need is suspicion. Heck, you can do it if you simply don't like the victim.

Start with the majority of guys in the military...

I call bullshit. Our military leaders were amoung the first to raise questions about the use of torture. I can't see how any soldier who might be taken captive could possibly want the anxiety of knowing that their country is the only one on the face of the earth that officially condones torture.

I'm sure you can find some yahoos in the military who say otherwise, but I doubt they are a majority, or even a significant minority.

Well here is the problem, was a crime clearly commited? The so called torture everyone seems to be screaming about may not meet the legal definition of torture.

You might try reading the Convention Against Torture, which Ronald Reagan signed in 1988 and was duly ratified by the Senate in 1994. There is no room for doubt. The same treaty also states that there are No circumstances whatsoever under which torture is justifiable.

And, just in case you want to argue that that was "only" a treaty, I'll quote from Article VI of the United States Constitution:

This Constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding.

P.S.

I'll also point out that waterboarding was prosecuted as a war crime by the U.S. after World War 2. Japanese who were found guilty of doing it to our soldiers received sentences that ranged from decades of hard labor to death.

Prominent conservatives have completely abandoned the moral high ground to defend a few of their own. All they really care about is power and the freedom to use at at their whim. They don't really believe that "morals" stuff. I don't think they ever did. They just play-acted on T.V. to sucker religious people into voting for them.

I have some questions for you:

1) Is there any act you can think of that is so horrible that the United States of America should never do it, regardless of circumstances?

2) If expediency is a sufficient argument for the use of torture on alleged or suspected terrorists, what other kinds of crimes would also justify its use? Where do you draw the line?

P.S.:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/02/AR2007110201170.html

In this case from the tribunal's records, the victim was a prisoner in the Japanese-occupied Dutch East Indies:

A towel was fixed under the chin and down over the face. Then many buckets of water were poured into the towel so that the water gradually reached the mouth and rising further eventually also the nostrils, which resulted in his becoming unconscious and collapsing like a person drowned. This procedure was sometimes repeated 5-6 times in succession.

It sure sounds like waterboarding to me.

You refer to partial birth abortion, a procedure that is now illegal. I'll guess that you would expect this law to be enforced. I expect no less for the laws against torture.

Since it appears that our government intends to continue using questionable methods, I think we should avoid the inconvenience of convening a special body each time they do and have a permanent organization dedicated to the job.

Perhaps we could call it the "Ministry of Truth".

There's a world of difference between "give some credence to" or "likely to suspect" and outright accusations.

I was willing to give this theory some credence after watching Bush and his cronies for a few years, but I never reached the conclusion that he did it and I never made any such accusation.

Conservatives have worked for many years to try to establish themselves as being on the side of goodness and morality. It is enlightening to see how quickly they abandoned that position to defend a few of their elites.

Torture is wrong. It is immoral. It is evil. It is not something the United States of American should ever use for any reason. Hearing conservatives argue otherwise just shows that conservatives do not practice the values that they preach.