Suppose a US pilot is captured, a colonel, say, from a B-2 Stealth bomber. Do people like Krauthammer really mean that those who captured him could legally torture him to gain vital information that would save the lives of god knows how many people on the ground wherever this colonel happened to be bombing? Of course not! That "saving lives" shit is only and exclusivley AMERICAN lives--all others must obey the rules and let their cities, power plants, drinking water, and sewage systems get bombed back to the 18th century. Krauthammer is an amoral prick and a lying sack of shit. Problem is, maybe half of our countrymen see no problem with this gross hypocracy and and would be offended that I even pointed it out.

The Establishment wants the money and power and safety that Imperium gives them. They will countenance any crime to keep what they have. Enlightenment arguments about universal human rights and equlity before the law, Christian notions of loving ones enemies and turning the other cheek, need not apply.

All these Fool-based Krauthammeresque arguments are a deliberate distraction. None of the men tortured by Bush and company were "ticking time bombs." So the tortured defense of torture is irrelevant to the facts as they exist.

The real argument, in all its circularity, they want to make is: "We have to have the right to toruture ticking time bombs." But we have no ticking time bombs. So, the Fool and others respond, "Well, we have to be able to torture people in order to find out IF they are ticking time bombs, then not be held accountable in any way if they are not ticking time bombs." You see, everyone they capture may, potentially, be a ticking time bomb in their minds, so we've got to torutre them based on this assumption of guilt, and then sweep the proceedings under the rug if it turns out that we put these people through hell, damaging them in body and mind, and they had not life-saving insights to spill or were ticking time bombs ("better safe than sorry"). That is what maybe half the US population really thinks, and is either openly espousing or silently supporting.

This is why they want so desperately to save the ticking time bomb defense. Then they can torture at will and hide behind a "good faith" defense that they "thought" the person "might" be a ticking time bomb or have some other absolutley essential bit of information locked in thier brains, so you can't hold us accountable for toruturing them, now can you? Right, we all agreed that in the ticking time bomb scenario, it may be necessary to torutre, and since we weren't sure, the only prudent thing we could do was to protect the American people was torturing the living shit out of some Ay-rab darky who means us ill anyone. You gotta problem with that, pussy? Then go live in Iran where they'll cut your tongue out for being a stinking liberal!

That's the true dialogue going on underneath the endless crazy scenarios and bizzare justifications. That's the mentality we are fighting, and I fear we are losing to it.

How about you break the law via torturing someone, which is illegal, to save all those lives (and as a military historian I can tell you point-blank that there are no extant nuclear weapons or population centers with densities high enough to take out 15 million people in one go) and then ACCEPT THE PUNISHMENT FOR BREAKING THE LAW. If you've done the right thing in your heart, can't you then live with the consequences of breaking the law for what you thought was a good reason? How about having the courage of your convictions? And if you guessed wrong and the person was not a ticking time bomb, maybe you should feel guilt and remorse for torturing the wrong man, and then give yourself up for punishment? You know, act nobly? Oh, I'm sorry, self-sacrifice and nobility are too much to ask for these days. We just need to be sly, gutless wonders out to save our own asses no matter how much depravity we have to engage in. Sorry I asked.

Just read that Pew poll and have gotten really down lately. I think we should have seen massive demonstrations in the streets of every town and villiage, with flags flying upside down as a symbol of our collective distress once the first glimmer of how bad it got (and I harldy think that what Obama released was the worst of what was going on) under Bush and Company. The fact that so many Mainstream Media types are giving us the old cop's bum's rush ("nothing to see, here, folk, move along") and that organized opposition to these outrages seems not to be emerging makes me fear that the Fool and the Krauthammers and the Friedmans are convincing huge swaths of the population to pretend either it wasn't as bad as it was, or to just hustle by and sink it all down the memory hole.

And the fact the Protestand American seems totally unfamiliar with the Sermon on the Mount is also a devasting blow to any chance of righting these wrongs.

Keeping the Faith,

James Levy

If defedning the indefensible upsets me, sorry. If having a moral compass is old fashioned, excuse me. But this is not some parlour game or intellectual exercise, which you bloodlessly wish to make it, while excoriating your opponents and insulting them and their intelligence because they think you are full of shit, which you are. Hey, what can I say, if you prick me, do I not bleed?

It was you, sir, who threw the first "fuck you", so taking the intellectual high ground is a bit absurd.