I'd take Kennedy over Bush any day.

ask the Pope.

>>A good question for the Salon crowd to consider is how can any religion who believes its god-given duty is to dominate humankind ever be sated?>>

Comparison and Contrast is one of the simplest essay forms. It is taught in high school, and, in remedial classes, it is taught yet again in college. You don't have to be especially smart to write to the formula.

Here is an example of the simple formula:

America is the good guys.

1.

2.

3.

(list three supporting reasons why we are the good guys)

Those Arabs over there are the bad guys.

1.

2.

3.

(list three supporting reasons why those Arabs in Iraq (Afganistan, Iran, etc.) are the bad guys.

Follow with a brief concluding statement.

Now that everyone had passed basic essay writing, would anyone like to consider this: We are a democracy. Therefore, we must earn our good guy badge every day. We don't get to act like everyone else whom we abhor. We don't even get to discard others' rights and keep our own constitutional rights to ourselves. We have to consider the rights of all on every possible level. This is because, once we disregard the rights of others, the bad guys in our own nation "will come for us."

Hi Mikes,

You seem quite fixated on what various criminals have done to some American citizens. Terrible crimes indeed, but what do they have to do with the US government torturing people? Are you saying that the US government is allowed to commit any crime that anyone else, anywhere, has done?

Perhaps you think that the people the US government tortures are the same people who behead Americans. Hint: in most cases, they aren't. And even if they were, torturing and murdering them would still be an atrocity and a crime, if the words "American justice" retain any meaning at all.

-Jeremy

I don't hate America or the troops.

Poor ol' Mike, and it would appear a lot of other folks out there, sure seem fixated (and apparently quaking in their birkies) over the beheading thing. See, that's how these things work. Fear works on the faint-hearted. How many letters have you read, or times have you heard (most recently from fear-monger Rudy), that there are hordes of swarthy allah-akbar-shouting kaffiyeh-wearing scimitar-waving cold-blooded killers out there just waiting to invade our shores and either cut or saw off our heads because we ain't killing 'em fast enough 'over there'. P!ss on you faint-hearts. The hell with you. I enjoy the view from up here, not down there cringing on my knees . . .

Sounds like Gibley is a more arty propagandist than Michael Moore, who's just tawdry. If Gibley can get O'Hehir to wish torture on our fellow Americans, it must be effective propaganda. Andrew, let me know will you when internet broadcast beheadings of American held detainees becomes part of US policy, that would be a story, we'd really be aping the enemy then.

Oh don't I know it.

The irony is that one of the aforementioned family members was grateful for what "Uncle Joe's" armies did to the Germans, making his job a helluva lot easier (Stars and Stripes covered the progress on the Eastern Front). The other family member, stationed in Bavaria with the rest of Company E of the 101st Airborne, was a little miffed, as were his comrades. He and they felt they'd earned the right kick Hitler's ass in a very up-close and personal way.

Yes...THAT Company E. The reason he's not in Ambrose's book or the HBO miniseries is because he told the research assistant who called him that he didn't want to relive the war, thank you very much.

"when did i advocate such a thing?"

Well the context of your comment "that’s not holding bullies up to the harsh judgment they so richly deserve" certainly indicates sympathy with O'Hehir's violent fantasy. You condone his rage so you may very well (but hopefully don't) subscribe to O'Hehir's version of judgement for Bush & Co.: kidnapping and torture.

"and are you disputing that detainees - who have not yet been tried - are being tortured?"

I made no comment on that subject and it is dishonest to introduce that idea. You can't defend O'Hehir's sentiments so you manufacture false one's and suggest that I hold them?

And I fail to see how my calling O'Hehir self-loathing and condemning his rage are hypocrisy, but nice try.

listen, Rob, if you argue that America may not be the country that was written in all of our social studies books in Jr. High School, you obviously hate this country, hate it's leaders, hate it's people, and should be imprisoned.

The slogan isn't: "America, love it or leave it", anymore. It's "America. Love it or rot in a cell on your way to unholy damnation you liberal scum".

Our government actually did torture people to death, yet you attack Andrew for just saying something as if they were the same. I guess in your world they are.

I share Andrew O'Hehir's rage at the Bush/Cheney policies on torture, but I found it chilling to read the writer's punishment fantasy: "...if this country had any fucking stones we would drag these people out of Washington, strip them of their citizenship and their clothes, and drive them white-baby naked across the Rio Grande to fend for themselves in the Sonora desert."

If the point of the article was to decry torture, O'Hehir sabotages his argument with such disturbingly ironic imagery. On the one hand, he argues eloquently about the need to see our "enemies" as more than just faceless villains deserving of no mercy. In the next breath, he details his cruel version of justice for the perpetrators of the abuse.

I'd be as happy as anyone to see the current occupants of the White House impeached and publicly shamed for their many misdeeds. Just please don't torture them.

you smugly deride andrew for a rage that is neither 'noble' or 'constructive'

after telling him

"that’s you being a self-loathing class–act."

i appreciate your bequeathing the hyposcrisy award to me, but aw, shucks -- i can think of someone else that's better deserving of it.