I've been wondering where this issue had gone. This must be kept in the mainstream and acted upon, if only to slow down the degredation of the United State's reputation worldwide. Thank you Senator, for your efforts, when many have run out of energy in the face of this administration's continual assault on the constitution. Please keep up the fight.

Well that is good but what about torture in the good old USA? Why not ban that?

Ban tasings, extra-judicial beatings, killings, druggings and offer up severe penalities for those who practice torture.

If it's good enough for the Taliban and Al Qaeda, what about you and I?

How many more innocent Americans must be brutalized and killed by out of control officers of the law, mercenaries (Blackwater in New Orleans), private security officers and others who think it is ok because they watched it on Fox Television?

These were conservative Republicans who were also loyal patriots trying to uphold the rule of law.

have a very short shelf life in the Bush administration.

Look, the logic is simple:

The president says that this country does not torture. Therefore, whatever it is that we are doing, it's not torture by definition.

Case closed.

when word of the shredding and burning parties surfaces in early January 2009. I can only hope that the incompetence of this administration carries over to the attempts to destroy evidence that will surely come.

Does this bill prevent sending those "needing" torture prevent the American torturers from getting their needs met by asking another country to do it for them?

The National Religious Campaign Against Torture -- an interfaith organization of over 130 religious organizations -- has been working to stop U.S. sponsored torture since January of last year. This is not a partisan issue; nor is it an issue of national defense. (Torture doesn't even work.) It's a matter of our moral character and leadership. Stopping the CIA "enhanced" interrogation program is a national priority and one way to do it is to require the CIA to comply with the Army Field Manual. While the Army Field Manual isn't exactly the "gold standard" for interrogation, it's a long way from what the CIA has been allowed to do. We need to support Senator Kennedy's bill and, in addition, close secret prisons, stop rendition for torture, and hold the torturers accountable (as we try to do in other countries). Then we can begin to reclaim our position of moral leadership in the world .

Thank you Ted Kennedy, for sponsoring the first step in abolishing current American torture practices. And I hope that you will thereafter sponsor the second step of necessary legislation to end the more hidden torture: indefinite detention, and the abolition of habeas corpus for detainees. And the third step: to end cladestine rendition, which is unacceptable under any civilized law.

It is all too obvious that torture was used to get the admissions desired to justify invasion of Afghanistan, Iraq and, if Congress doesn't stop Bush/Cheney, Iran. So many details from the reporting on 9/11, on the interrogations by the CIA, on Guantanamo, show with frightening clarity, that legal blackholes, indefinite detention, lack of habeas corpus and physical torture are used as incremental steps to force a detainee to admit what the Bush administration wants to hear in order to justify its totalitarian agenda, not to collect genuine intelligence. As can be expected, most of those "facts" collapse later on, with many explanations by Bush how they believed etc. even though it was clear from the start that the evidence didn't exist. That too, is intentional. There was no doubt from the beginning on 9/11, that the Bush government went corrupt. The collapsing rationales inform and confirm to an ingroup, that corrupt practices continue to be used to define foreign policy. It serves all those in various war related industries to make their plans and budgets for another load of billions in profit.

Americans abhor the idea of blood money? What else is the profit of the big war related corporations if not blood money? About 1 mio. Iraqis paid for the American wealth with their life.

As you know all too well, Ted Kennedy, it will take a lot of legislation to bring America back to a genuinely legal democratic foundation, or this nation risks to implode like the world trade center on 9/11.

Thank you for not losing courage to sponsor legislation.

I really sincerely thank-you very much for this bill. It is long overdue. I wonder though what will be the response of the Pelosians when the cheney/buhs junta's lackeys in the Senate threaten you with a filibuster? They will. And to date the Democrats have inexplicably failed to do anything to stop the destruction of your constitution, torture, et al.

The real question though sir, is when will you and your colleagues defund the war? Will this destroy your party? No it will not! It will make your party.

The real torture Senator Kennedy, is the deaths of 1.2 Iraqis since your occupation began. (ORB report) That's 1.2 million violent deaths - by gunshot, by bomb, and yes, by torture. Some, like your demented and evil president, say it was "only" 30,000. Only 30,000. He lied.

3000 American dead and "the world changed". 1.2 million dead Iraqis, and you cannot weather a filibuster for the sake of those poor benighted people, and the shreds of your democracy. Stop the torture of Iraq, stop the attack on Iran, and then try to pass your bill. First things first.

Jack would have known what to do.

Those who don't wish to have torture banned are either sadists or know nothing about gathering intelligence.

Torture is an unreliable source of information. People will tell endless stories to stop discomfort. Those who profess to use it are ignorant and unprofessional.

Current cocktails of drugs will induce the truth far more reliably and the subject half the time won't even remember spilling the beans.

Grow up America, torture is not about saving lives. It's about something much darker in all our psyches.

Thank you, Senator Kennedy, for your views and for your efforts on behalf of the many torture victims that have been horribly abused with the (secret!) consent of this administration.

How many more times are they going to get away with the predictable, yet effective, tactic? You know - whip up the fear, which garners support for just about anything that is touted to make our citizens "safer".

When will the house and the senate finally stand up to the President and his cronies and say NO - you cannot justify EVERYTHING by either saying it's necessary to keep us safe from the terrorists, or not allow examinations of your actions because they are secret, and secrets are necessary to keep us safe from the terrorists. My God, we have become the terrorists.

When will congress grow a spine and really abide by the wishes of the vast majority of Americans? Get us OUT of Iraq...NOW.

Yes, indeed - this legislation is long overdue.