Doesn't how a big problem it is reflect on the best way you think to address it?

No. There are some lines that you don't cross. Ever. That is what having morals is all about. Torture is one of the lines.

There are over 100 deaths in custody since what the Bush Administration calls the Global War on Terror began. Many have been ruled homicide, some have been ruled homicide involving torture.

There is no problem with signal-to-noise. What you are doing is mistaking the concept of outlier, when a statistical data point is unreflective of general behavior, and the concept of signal embedded in noise, which may very well be an uncharacteristic and small percentage of the total transmission.

Civil and human rights are always a problem of exception and fringe in any nominally civil society. You're implementation of civil rights is determined by how you treat the worst members of society, not the best. Saying you will treat most people okay, but the really bad ones, differently, is to say you have no basic morals about civil rights. When people say that isn't what this country stands for, they're right. Correctional officers who cross that line, no matter what the circumstances, are supposed to be punished. That's what is meant by "a nation of laws, not a nation of men". I truly hope, RealName, that I'm not saying anything that's new to you.

On top of that, what is being argued here is ostensibly a system for treatment, implemented by the White House. Systems are treated differently than individual excesses when it comes to torture and cruelty. Individual torture is a war crime. Systematic torture is a crime against humanity.

I've cited empirical evidence in this very post that huge numbers of evangelical Christians affirmatively believe in "torture."GG

For non-sociopathic people -- that is, those with functioning senses of empathy -- I think that the Golden Rule is all that is really required to prevent torture or other crimes against humanity.ETOH

Christians teach the Golden Rule in kindergarten Sunday School. Whatever happened to "Inasmuch as ye have done to the least of my brethren" and the Good Samaritan and all that?

Oh, well, I read in the NYT yesterday that evangelical Christians in China are hoping their numbers will be several hundred million in 20 to 30 years, making them the largest Christian country in the world. Then we can get the whole world into the act.

Damn straight. The military also takes an oath to protect and defend the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic.

I perhaps muddied the waters when I used it the first time on this post. I was speaking of correctional officers who, for some expedient reason, mistreat inmates, and I said that I would hope they were punished. I had intended two things:

1) To indicate that the fact that they were correctional officers did not change the fact that we have laws against beating prisoners that have no exceptions, and,

2) To indicate that we have laws (or rules or beliefs) in our society that brook no exceptions at all. As I had said earlier in the post, civil and human rights are defined by how we treat the worst among us, not the best, and soldiers are not allowed to gas each other even if it's the only way to win.

Only 1) is a proper use for the phrase, which was originally government emphatically of laws and not a government of men, and meant at the time, and still means, that no one is above the law.

However, I was also emphatically applying it to 2), which is not its traditional use. While 1) defines how we behave, 2) in some sense, defines who we are. I would submit, humbly since I don't know what jojo++ means by Volk (I thought it meant people), that what jojo++ says applies only to 1) not to 2).