I always fall for the jokers on these threats - Steve! Come back you were really funny and the 'vagina' gave it away!

Today's editorial:

"Judge Crawford’s legal finding that torture occurred adds a new complication, since a treaty obliges the United States to investigate such allegations."

I love both "a treaty" and "investigate". I believe the words are "the UN Convention Against Torture" and "prosecute".

But that wouldn't be nice.

Let's say you're in Afghanistan, near . Your job is to go from one small village to the next, doing house-to-house searches, looking for Al Qaida.

Between villages, you intercept a small group of people who are in transit to who knows where. You use metal detectors, and on them you find four grenades (one of them hidden in a woman's vagina), and two cell phones (and yes, one of them hidden in a woman's vagina.)

You know that the simple knowledge of where they were coming from, and who the are on their way to see, would probably save lives -- possibly yourself and your friends.

Well then, it's a good thing that there are rules and laws and stuff, huh?

It is what it is. War crimes. And war crimes are supposed to be prosecuted. Period. Why we think we should be the exception to that, I'll never know. But as long as we continue to run this double standard, the higher the probability that these same "interrogation methods" will be used on our own soldiers, and we won't have a moral leg to stand on. We can't do it to others and then insist it can't be done to us. We play that game far too much as it is.

But nothing will be done. You know it and I know it. So like we have for the past 8 years, we must simply live with our impotent rage, because "doing the right thing" is not politically expedient. Extramarital affairs are serious business that must be dealt with in gory, dragged-out and expensive detail, but war crimes? Not worth getting everyone all upset. Play nice.

I never liked the word 'torturer' and your creation the 'they deemed it necessary people' is way more... how could I say it... its like... sehr konkrete Lyrik!

The ends don't justify the means Steve. It's that simple, what was wrong for the Nazis is wrong for America, and just as prosecutable.

Read the whole article, the parallels are stunning.

The phrase "Verschärfte Vernehmung" is German for "enhanced interrogation". Other translations include "intensified interrogation" or "sharpened interrogation". It's a phrase that appears to have been concocted in 1937, to describe a form of torture that would leave no marks, and hence save the embarrassment pre-war Nazi officials were experiencing as their wounded torture victims ended up in court. The methods, as you can see above, are indistinguishable from those described as "enhanced interrogation techniques" by the president. As you can see from the Gestapo memo, moreover, the Nazis were adamant that their "enhanced interrogation techniques" would be carefully restricted and controlled, monitored by an elite professional staff, of the kind recommended by Charles Krauthammer, and strictly reserved for certain categories of prisoner. At least, that was the original plan.

Also: the use of hypothermia, authorized by Bush and Rumsfeld, was initially forbidden. 'Waterboarding" was forbidden too, unlike that authorized by Bush. As time went on, historians have found that all the bureaucratic restrictions were eventually broken or abridged. Once you start torturing, it has a life of its own. http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2007/05/verschfte_verne.html

I'll sign off after this post.

But I'll leave you with this:

Let's say you're in Afghanistan, near . Your job is to go from one small village to the next, doing house-to-house searches, looking for Al Qaida.

Between villages, you intercept a small group of people who are in transit to who knows where. You use metal detectors, and on them you find four grenades (one of them hidden in a woman's vagina), and two cell phones (and yes, one of them hidden in a woman's vagina.)

You know that the simple knowledge of where they were coming from, and who the are on their way to see, would probably save lives -- possibly yourself and your friends.

This is not an abstract argument; it's an actual situation that a few 20-some year old guys might themselves in during war, under Bush or under Obama.

They have to decide how badly they want information. Hopefully, they can buy it for a few hundred dollars.

That's nice, but I am more interested in Steve's perceptions of torture. He appears to be quite a fan. I am curious about his contempt for the Constitution.

Dick Cheney last week in an interview with Wolf Blitzer casts his usual downplay of torture authorization from the Bush administration. In this interview he claims that there were no cases of waterboarding after 2003 and that it was limited to only 3 individuals.

Glenn, please do another favor and find out how big these lies really are. Usually when I hear lies coming from the Bush administration, I multiply by 10 and then we're close to the truth. Thus, I am betting there is a hell of a lot more cases of waterboarding after 2003.

Please expose the Dick Cheney lies and cast more light on his role in authorizing torture.

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0901/11/le.01.html

Aside from the legal requirements that Glenn outlines so well, a case can be made that the way to "move on" as a society is not to simply ignore, deny, or forget the harm that was done but to follow a process that actually begins to resolve our political, psychological, and spiritual issues involving our country's abuse of human rights. The justice system can provide an important aspect of that process. Investigative commissions, individual and community grieving, an open political process, and frank, honest acknowledgment by national leaders are other needed aspects. The process is necessary in order to "move on", and especially in order to assure a national value system based on zero tolerance for torture in the future. The way out is through.