There's a lot of talk in the article about the pros and cons of attacking Iran and its effects on American interests, and none on its effects on real people in the wider world outside the sphere of 'American interests'.

America has no right - no right at all - to contemplate unleashing mayhem around the world on the calculation that, on balance, its net effects would be in American interests.

America would have no international support for this act (apart from Israel) and would be considered a pariah state. Doubtless, some Americans would just say that the rest of the world can go and screw itself, but they, with their friends in the media, are currently calling the shots.

I have no time for Ahmadinejad, but if the roles were reversed and George Bush were interviewed in a Tehran university and was subjected to rude and abusive behaviour from his hosts, then the American media would - rightly - be outraged.

However, in America, which likes to think of itself as a bastion of free speech and tolerance, this sort of abuse of an invited guest was not only tolerated but celebrated.

Of course, we'll never know what actually would happen if George Bush went to Iran because any sort of dialogue with Iran is off the table, and Bush's handlers go to extreme lengths to ensure that he never even sees any sort of protest, let alone has to deal with hostile questions.

People worry that this could be the thin end of the wedge: the first step is to 'allow' women in universities to wear the hijab. The next step is to 'expect' them to wear the hijab. And then to 'compel' the wearing of the hijab.

Turkey's spent many years trying to turn itself into a broadly secular state so it's no wonder there's so much opposition to what could be the first steps back towards an Islamic state.

You can't apply Western norms to this - it's not about the right of women to wear what they please, but the right to keep religion out of the public sphere.

This bill is long overdue.

To start regaining the respect of the rest of the world, America must publicly repudiate torture (both home-grown and sub-contracted), extraordinary rendition and the use of Black Sites for detainees.

Apart from the the sheer immorality of torture, if America doesn't stop torturing then the rest of the world becomes a more dangerous place for captured American combatants. Unscrupulous captors can justify, in their own minds at least, the abuse of their captives - if America can get away with it under the eyes of the world, then why shouldn't we?

Karen Hughes may well ignore this letter but presumably it's not aimed only at her; it's an open letter so will be read by Salon readers and hopefully many others.

And if that (and the film) help raise public awareness of this administration's torture policy, then that's fine by me.

Doing the science is not enough on its own. You need to get governments to actually DO something about global warming.

Al Gore has made millions of people round the globe more aware of the importance of global warming and the scale of the problem, and that's an important step in shaming recalcitrant governments (like the US) into taking it seriously.

This is not how I remember the build up to the Iraq war.

There may well have been some incompetence at the CIA, but you're not telling me that there was nothing in particular driving these wholesale intelligence failures, where the decision to go to war - to go to war for heavens's sake! - was all based on dubious information from a small number of shady informants.

Bush and his cabal were taking the US to war no matter what. If the intelligence didn't fit then the CIA would make it fit. Or else. This was clear from the Downing Street Memo.

And as for Drogin's comments about Judy Miller - 'unfairly vilified' and 'she honestly did what she thought was right'. Glenn Greenwald has a few things to say about journalists like this.

Quoted by Glenn:

"A sensible FISA fix would set a low threshold for the executive branch to commence monitoring. There should be no restrictions when targets are non-citizens outside the United States, even if they contact people inside the United States."

As a non-US citizen living outside the US (and not a terrorist), I don't take kindly to being eavesdropped on either. It's bad enough if your own government does it but even worse if it's a foreign one.

What gets me about the torture debate in America is how openly and casually these techniques are discussed.

On one level, this is a good thing (free speech and all that), but it's really quite scary as well. Most, if not all regimes that employ torture now or have in the past, deny it and try to hide it. They do this because they know it is shameful and is not the mark of a civilized society.

But in America, people like Giuliani (who is a presidential candidate for God's sake) don't even realize there's anything particularly wrong with it. Or, by Orwellian doublethink, say that it's wrong except if Americans are doing it when, of course, it's not torture at all.

And Americans want somebody like this as their president?

"George Randall Taylor, a chief of police at a Navy base in Bermuda, exposed coverups of rapes on the base. He was then forced into a psychiatric hospital."

And that's what used to happen in the darkest days of the Soviet Union - criticize officialdom and you were declared insane and carted off to a psychiatric institution.

I'd just like to point out that Britain's 'socialized' healthcare applies to the whole of the UK, not just England. That is, England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Too much to expect Rudy Giuliani to know that either.