Glenn - thanks for your excellent work. The torture scandal must be investigated at the highest levels of government and those responsible (GOP and Democrats alike) must be brought to justice.

If I may put on a homeruk hat for a moment, I'm sure that calling these deaths "natural" makes perfect sense. Labeling them "murder" isn't that important when "natural" works just as well. And sounds better.

After all, if you beat a guy for days and stuff him in a sleeping bag, asphyxiation is a "natural" result. Just like it's "natural" to bleed to death after someone slashes your throat, or punches you in the gut and splits your spleen.

See? There's nothing wrong with calling these murders "natural deaths."

Naturally, murder victims are ALWAYS going to be dead.

"We didn't exterminate them or even try. Let it go."

You know, calamine, the Nazis didn't exterminate your people, either, yet for some reason, there are still some hard feelings.

Have you moved on from that issue? It was a long time ago, should anyone really care anymore?

(Some of the things you post really make me think you're an intentional self-parody.)

As you said before Glenn so perfectly, "Torture is fluid"

The act itself, the reverse engineered rule writings, the appeasement of Congress and the intertwining of the Military and private corporations spreading out the layers of culpability and finally the absolutely feeble, new President beautifully grabbing his ankles. Yeah, Fluid works for me.

All regulatory oversight for Department of Tarp Czar to be provided by the White House.

But in all seriosity...

Regarding tomorrow's expected release of the C.I.A. report detailing the killing of detainees in U.S. custody...hey, look on the bright side. Maybe at the last minute, our part-time TARP Czar, full-time Presidentialist, and one-time Constitutional professor will step in and suppress the report.

Nothing like a little multi-dimensional chess, after all, to celebrate both the birth, and death, of the idea called America.

Your heart string plucking sophistry is weak tea. Maybe the soldiers who did the torturing should have been asking themselves what Jesus would have done then, when they were committing acts of torture and murder, instead of conveniently invoking Jesus' teachings after the fact and applying it to the victims and not the torturers that completely dominated them. It's a little late and a bit more than disingenuous to start quoting Jesus in defense of Empire (of all things). The Empire only crucified him and stuff.

But of course it is easier to ignore Jesus' words when committing amoral acts against others and then opine about the importance of forgiveness from the victims. It is infinitely easier to apply his teachings to others and opine about how others should be forgiving us (like Jesus would!) instead of applying Jesus' teachings to the initial acts of un-Jesus-like torture murder that said forgiveness applies to.

And it's cute how you speak of forgiveness after conveniently giving a moral back door to The Troops. We killed a million Iraqis, and we should expect them to forgive us for it (like the Koreans did, you said), but the soldier that got hit by the IDE occupying and terrorizing a country in the service of the American Empire "can be forgiven not loving their enemies", i.e. are not expected to forgive their enemies like Jesus would, even though the reverse isn't true, i.e. we should expect the Iraqis to forgive us for all we've done.

The hypocrisy of Christian Fakers such as yourself, who fallaciously use Jesus' teachings as an appeal to authority when warmongering, is endless and mind-boggling.

Gary Bauer, a former Republican presidential candidate affiliated with several Christian right groups over the years, said the discussion should not come down to "Would Jesus torture?"

"There are a lot of things Jesus wouldn't do because he's the son of God," he said. "I can't imagine Jesus being a Marine or a policeman or a bank president, for that matter. The more appropriate question is, 'What is a follower of Jesus permitted to do?'"

Bauer said the answer is "it depends"—but the moral equation changes when the suspect is not a soldier captured on a battlefield but a terrorist who may have knowledge of an impending attack. He said he does not consider water-boarding—a form of interrogation that simulates drowning—to be torture.

"I think if we believe the person we have can give us information to stop thousands of Americans from being killed, it would be morally suspect to not use harsh tactics to get that information," Bauer said. (emphasis added)

http://tinyurl.com/kspmtz

'We didn't exterminate them or even try to' well whoop de do! What fine humane people you are. The only way you'll ever understand this calamine is for someone to come to your house in the middle of the night and take you away to a prison, even though you've committed no crime and to then beat, sodomize, electrocute, force feed and freeze you and then lock you up in the dark for days and then to throw you at walls or hang you up by your shoulders from the ceiling and then after that they should set savage dogs on you and laugh and take pictures while you bleed. It would also help if you can imagine being a mother watching her ten year old son being raped or that same mother being raped, perhaps gang raped. You just don't get it and you never will until it happens to you or your family. You lack that terrible defect of empathy so despised by the Republicans. Let the dead bury the dead? That's just bullshit not to mention cowardice.

So torture and murder are OK unless the word "exterminate" is used and then it is a terrible thing?

Right?

You are as much fun as a barrel of dead Nazis.

I'd say we have exterminated a million Iraqis or more.

I guess that isn't enough for you, is it?

@The Reality Kid

Bauer said the answer is "it depends"—but the moral equation changes when the suspect is not a soldier captured on a battlefield but a terrorist who may have knowledge of an impending attack. He said he does not consider water-boarding—a form of interrogation that simulates drowning—to be torture.

"I think if we believe the person we have can give us information to stop thousands of Americans from being killed, it would be morally suspect to not use harsh tactics to get that information," Bauer said.

emphasis added

These words "may" and "believe" open up a huge holes. The moral equation talked about here gets thrown all out of whack as soon as those are added. You may or may not know something about a potential attack. Anyone may know something. "May" is not "Does." the same goes for the word "believe." People can believe a lot of things, many of which are not true, or contradictory to what other people believe. Who do we trust to believe the right things, and make the judgment of who may or may not know something? Is it still morally justified if you believe someone may know something, but it turns out they do not?

That's the problem with justifying torture (or "harsh interrogation techniques" if you so insist) with the ticking bomb scenario. Once you do it, you can't take the torture back if you find out it wasn't justified, the information you believed was there wasn't.