Happy Holidays and thanks for writing your blog!

When I try to figure out the notions that Cheney, Limbaugh, Smerconish and Dershowitz put forth in defending torture, I have to think to myself that these are pretty smart guys. What the heck am I missing? They also seem to posit that torture is a conundrum for a great majority of the American people and its use is debatable. Essentially the same points made as when your two professors discuss the motivations of the enablers of torture.

I always knew that there are different rules for the politicos and the “Wall Street Masters of the Universe,” than for the “average joe” when one gets caught doing something wrong. I used to think the law and its efforts to punish wrong-doing generally applied to all. Except,of course, everybody agrees that if you can buy a good lawyer, “you’ll probably get away with it!” Certainly unfair, but c’est la vie! The rich and the politicians are different! They have their privileges. It is accepted wisdom! The war between the haves and the have-nots is very one-sided.

Also accepted wisdom, is that politicians are dishonest and only do what is good for themselves personally. But they are a necessary evil.

Growing up, I accepted those inequities as part of life.

But now the new accepted truism makes the acceptance of the aforementioned inequities more difficult to swallow. It is OK to torture if the intent is good. It’s amazing to me that the thousands of people who had to be involved in the torture-program didn’t question themselves as to what they were doing. Back in 2002 when I started hearing about the torture endeavors, I kept saying to myself, “once the American people realize what is going on there is going to be hell to pay. Why are we arbitrarily torturing thousands of people we’re liberating?” I was soooo wrong.

There is no popular outrage about torture, nor is there any noticeable outrage against the deceivers of Wall Street, only defenses put forth and monetary rewards given, at taxpayer expense.

I am now convinced that the rich and ruling class are immune to punishment from their contrived elitist justice system.

Glenn, you keep my hopes alive that maybe something can be done. Also I feel Rachel is getting better by the day.

But overall I tend to think all is lost and the country is truly going the way of Rome.

There are some very good posts here explaining how the ego-driven, power-hungry politicians plotted to give themselves more importance by wielding a big stick to control the world that are very convincing.

"In all likelihood, violence and murder are key and ineradicable components of human nature, which civilization can never suppress."

Your saying that evolution changes everything except certain key components of humanity like torture. You're saying that human nature doesn't evolve, that mankind doesn't learn from mistakes nor are they correctable. You're saying that over time man can't possibly improve his plight. So we are better off if we ignore the crimes of the elite because it only causes problems.

What about the common criminal? They also only cause problems. Should we ignore them also. Get rid of the penal system and let all the prisoners go free?

This is an extraordinary, remarkable film.

I hope that in the near future we could have a revisit of a similar plot with the same end-result. An admission of guilt! The new movie would be called Greenwald/Cheney.

Perhaps not, because Nixon got off too easy for his crimes. Hopefully it won't happen this time with people like Glenn, et al around.

I would love to see Glenn write a review of this movie and how it could apply to today's dilemma.

Mr. Drezner,

"Suppose an American serviceman is captured overseas and tortured by his captors, who excuse their actions by claiming that they sincerely believe that they are acting in the best interest of their country. Are you OK with that?"

This is a question directed at Drezner and contained in one of the comments in his blog that elucidates the difficulties that he is confronting.

Reading his blog and the associated comments is illuminating. Many comments appear to me to be coming from his academic peers and he is taken to task, not in a kindly manner.

Also the comments are all on-topic, poetry-free, satire-free, irony-free, and do not contain socializing items nor commenter-credentials.

For the people who love to be off-topic and read poetry that possesses sageiness(sic) and then provide comments that are rife with satire and sarcasm and irony, then I believe they have the option to start their own blog, as Glenn suggests.

They can indulge themselves in all the aforementioned "enjoyments" to their heart's content. They can do their little socializing things and exchange their "insider" compliments and describe their daily activities as if they are around the water cooler at work.

But I think Glenn works hard to provide timely topics that are worthy of meaningful discussion and he is frustrated. The people who are interested in topic discussion and not the off-topic accoutrements have to parse though all the comments that are personal and not relevant to wrote Glenn wrote.

I think its just rude.