1) The US's use of water boarding did not violate the Geneva convention because the victims were not uniformed combatants. O'Reilly stressed this in a recent exchange with Christopher Hitchens.

2) The water boarding of Khalid Sheik Mohammed worked in that he gave up a lot of valuable information. This information led to the killing or capture of many operatives, and it saved thousands of lives. O'Reilly stated this, and it's in the Scarborough clip above.

What are the best responses to these claims?

1) I don't know enough about the law to help you here, although my sense is that O'Reilly doesn't know diddlysquat about how the legal issues surrounding the Geneva conventions. My sense is he's just plain wrong. I bet you can find the info somewhere on the web if you take the time. Glenn, you might even have some valuable links since you've written on this before.

2) Stated without evidence, I'm sure. First off, ask them to prove their assertions about saving lives and valuable information. They probably won't have an answer - they rely on what folks like Scarborough and Bush and Cheney claim the torture has produced. But of course the torturers will claim success - without public information that can be scrutinized, these claims don't mean much.

Also, ask if they are sure this information could not have been obtained in other ways (without torture). And ask if he gave any information that was crap, and wasted resources tracking down dead ends, resources that could have been used to go after real terrorists?

Finally, bring up the torture of people who have subsequently been released, who were later found to be innocent and had no links to terrorism and therefore no actionable information to provide. How do you justify the torture of the innocent?

These are all practical objections, I suppose. The best response is to simply say that torture is morally abhorrent. While correct, you are unlikely to win any arguments with folks like O'Reilly, who at that point would just call you a liberal panzy.

The reality is that real LEADERS, by definition, have the ability to CHANGE HOW PEOPLE THINK, to get them to be open to ideas that were previously marginalized and demonized as fringe and deviant. But by convincing people in advance that this is "not possible" they are relieved of the obligation to do the right thing -- because even, perhaps especially, their supporters start arguing that they can't.

I'm not sure how successful a real leader can be given the current environment. The ability of the media to stifle debate through concision and the use of limits on the bounds of discussion is extremely powerful. Especially combined with the natural resistance of people to change their beliefs. Long held beliefs are very hard to change.

It depends on the topic of course. Assuming Obama is aggressive about pursuing the Bushies for their law breaking, he might have some success, maybe a lot of success, since people are already open to ideas such as the rule of law is a good thing, human rights are important. These are already values that have a lot of support in the general population he can appeal to, and a large fraction of the population is already behind him, so he has a natural reservoir of support.

I'm not convinced he would prevail though. Most of the establishment seems to want to forget the whole sorry situation, mainly because many of them are/were complicit in the crimes. Even Obama went along with some of it. The political price could be quite high, and I don't think Obama has that kind of spine.

If you take something even more sensitive, if Obama tries to evangelize about peak oil and/or climate change, and do something real, he will run into a brick wall. The elites in the US will turn their guns upon him en masse. He will be unable to prevail against this barrage because people are not prepared for it. They will have to reorder their thinking to too great an extent, and Obama's policies would be DOA.

War crimes are therefore legal as long as you don't lose the war. If you lose the war then you'll be hanged.

Well, that's always been the case, all through history.

Although, recently there does seem to be an exception - if you commit war crimes in some 3rd world backwater, there is a slight possibility you will be hauled before an international tribunal and punished. That's about it though - if anyone in a powerful country does it, they will get away with it.

Interestingly, that suggests that your war is not justified to begin with. Unless, of course, your side is rebelling. In that case, hanging would be a noble yet undeserved death.

War crimes are a separate issue from whether or not a war is justified. I'd say the US was justified in going to war against Japan in 1941, but we committed war crimes by firebombing and nuking Japanese cities.

Had the Japanese somehow won the war, you can bet that Curtis LeMay and Truman would have hanged for war crimes.

Also, I'm not sure why you make the distinction about rebellion.

I'm not talking about idiots like bernbart here; I'm talking about the almost total lack of ANY outrage at flagrant violations of nearly every single legal principle and moral duty encapsulated in law. Rights to privacy? Gone. Rights to property? Gone. Rights to your own person? Gone.

Was going to reply, then got distracted.

Anyway, I'll defend privacy rights and the right to your own person, but as for property rights, good riddance. To steal a book title, "Property is Theft".

I'm speaking philosophically here - the kind of takings you're talking about, given how our economy is structured, is reprehensible, that is, the powerful just taking for themselves by state power what they want. But leaving that aside, property rights really are the root of much evil, and should be eliminated.