He dresses like a wannabe American Margaret Thatcher.

But with this piece, let's think of him as Torquemada Giuliani.

It rots away at the moral fabric of our country, of all of us.

Giuliani's embrace and minimization of torture is a sign of the greater disease --- the cancer that emboldens the authoritarians as it weakens the body politic.

Thanks for shining a light on this, AL. We must stop the madness.

but if it's discussed in public, it must be OK, right? I do think the "hiddenness" of hidden practices is readily taken as a sign of their wrongness---as you suggest. Putting it out in the open neutralizes that gut reaction.

Wait until Oprah interviews a pedophile. You'll see.

...because the stakes are so damned high.

Cheney made a big mistake when he authorized the use of torture. He assumed the american public would never find out, or if they did, they'd approve. Like so many of his assumptions, he was wrong. Or, at least, partly wrong.

If "standard, extreme interrogation" techniques are determined to be torture...then Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Tenant, and who knows who else? are subject to trial and imprisonment for war crimes.

The political fallout of Cheney and Bush personally approving torture is so radioactive, they simply can't afford it. Even now. So they spin, and spin and spin, hoping that it'll be just enough to confuse the idiot 30%..and a few more.

Note well: if we had the same relatively independent mass media we had in the 70s, and if we had some of the same congress-people we had then, and Cheney had tried this shit? He'd be in jail now. Or long gone from government anyway.

Giuliani is spouting nonsense because he understands how high the stakes are. You'll see and hear a lot more of this in the months to come. The stakes are very, very high here.

A couple months ago I read a story about an Iranian dissident who had been arressted for publishing some tract critical of the Mullahs or something like that. He had been kept in jail for something like two weeks and then appeared before a magistrate or whatever passes for a judge over there. Western and Iranian press were on hand for the guy's appearence and when he got a chance to speak he complained of being tortured. His torture? Being interrogated for hours with no breaks. And he was only allowed to call his family on the phone- not see them.

I thought to myself reading this- good Lord- how far we have fallen when our black holes of torture sound worse than Iran's.

The most revealing comment was Giuliani's take on sleep deprivation, which he doesn't consider torture. Indeed, he compared the lack of sleep he has experienced during the election campaign to the intense, days-long sleep deprivation suffered by victims of torture.

So now we have one presidential contender (Mitt Romney) claiming that having his sons work on his campaign is akin to serving overseas in Iraq, and yet another (Giuliani) claiming that a few sleepless nights is akin to forced sleep deprivation. And remember (prompted by a comment on today's TPM) how Donald Rumsfeld once compared his standing-desk posture to a painful stress position? Of course, if such techniques are truly benign, why would interrogators use them at all?

if it was done in the inquisition it must be OK. They were working for God.

On the other end of torture. I'm betting on a heart attack before things commence.

"But they talk about sleep deprivation. I mean, on that theory, I'm getting tortured running for president of the United States."

"I just flew in from Abu Ghraib, and boy is my anus full of lightsticks."

"You say that nuclear devices have gone off in the United States, more are planned, and we are wondering about whether waterboarding would a bad thing to do? I’m looking for Jack Bauer at that time, let me tell you!"

Two of those quotes are real.

I'm responding to you only because you complained that no liberals will respond to you, even though the issues of how our prisons are run and how our War on Terror is waged are separate issues. First off:

We as liberals have this great outrage that foreign nationals are being tortured and yet seem to have no thought at all for our fellow citizens being tortured and caged by the millions.

Something you need to recall is that it's not just about "foreign nationals." Americans, under current rendition policies, can be arrested, whisked away to Syria, and tortured on the basis of flimsy evidence. Maher Arar, recently apologized to by our Congress for being a victim of these policies, was a Canadian, yes, but last I checked we were very friendly with Canada.

It sounds like what you want is for a similar level of outrage at the corruption and mismanagement inherent in our domestic, criminal prison system, but this whole argument of "Why complain about X when Y is so bad?" misses the point: both X and Y are terrible.

But why are we so much more pissed off about the torture tactics used in the War on Terror? Because, aycharaych, the fallout is potentially greater and on a global scale. This is not to say that torture in American prisons has no consequence. It is to say that torture sanctioned by the highest levels of our government as a wartime tactic is an abomination that makes even the prison system pale in comparison.

Blessed sleep...I's a rest like none other (otter) divine experience of a other (otter) person can explain...Is it describable?

I was hoping Chris Floyd was sound asleep. I've not read him yet.

I hope he don't get jealous because he sleeps in his pick-up truck on the way home from Oxford, across the Atlantic, on his way home to visit his dear elder father, Edsel.

A $4,000 hotel-hovel.

Wow- I'd write on the whore house wall: Giuliani's hog-cart whiner sales are gone SOUR- Sauerkraut.

Eat dachshunds weinersnitzels or raw pork-sanitizers for the GOP's annual cross-dress DC's hoopla. Protect children.

Perhaps the "Weekly Standard," and maybe the "Wall Street Journal" and the "New York Times" or the Institute for Health and Human Services can do reproduction ink-print rubs from Giuliani graphiti hotel scribble? A sex-education course like the GOP's kinky-ilk would educate a sheltered, but a better world.

It would be a money maker for repub flops. And a GOP boink mule arse honey sticker? gads. Kilroy, A.L., and bebop-o, but not Glenn or Gooey politico's sleep...I bet, ever, ever.

Gads. Are the gops flops? Yes.