Patrick Fitzgerald should test out the worst of the torture methods on White House personnel to finish up his leak investigation to find out if Rove, Bush and Cheney knew and approved of the treason. It the methods are proven to work I'm more prone to support them and these hidden gulags following Fitzgerald's success at putting these enemies of democracy behind bars in one of them.

Cheney, Rumsfeld, and other cro-magnon 'men' in the administration enjoy beating their chests and pretendnig that condoning torture makes them all manly-like, but the fact is that torture doesn't work. That is, if the point of torture is to get reliable information. See, the thing is, when you're pressing a red-hot poker against someone's genitals, they're likely to tell you whatever they think you want to hear.

I guess Cheney & Co. must not know that, and must not be able to reason it out using their Manly-Man brains. So they keep on choosing torture over methods that work, earning them more and more enemies in the world.

Between that and the terrorist-generating bonanza that is American-occupied Iraq, it's easy to get the impression that this administration is all about creating as many America-hating terrorists as possible.

Scary.

Now, I wonder why they'd do that?

Makes you want to move to Haiti -- warmer climate, less efficient tax collection system, and the voodoo might actually work on the Bush doll!

Aside from the issue of whether or not torture is even useful--and it sounds like it doesn't--we need to ask what we're even doing it for. Presumably, we're fighting these wars for principles that we believe we stand for: basic human rights and freedoms.

Using torture, or even suggesting any legitimacy for torture negates any legitimacy for these wars and struggles in the first place.

Anyone who adopts the methods of terror becomes a terrorist and belongs on the other side of the barbed wire.

You're absolutely correct, Not Taking It Anymore. Not only is torture counter-productive, it's also not something good people do. As you pointed out, it undermines us in every way.

So why is it possible for this administration to publicly debate torture policies like this? Why is it possible for them to get away with treatening to veto any bill that includes restrictions on torture? It's just amazing that people seem to buy into the idea that somehow torture is a good thing.

Thankfully, my nephew just returned unscathed from his second tour of duty in Iraq (Marines). I just have to express the anger I feel at any suggestion of squishiness in policy regarding *any* kind of abuse of prisoners. It's just sickening. Such talk--let alone policy--just puts up a neon sign for terrorists around the world that prisoner abuse and maltreatment of innocents is just responding in kind.

Beyond my comments earlier about negating what we're even supposedly fighting for, it should be remembered by these "supporters" of our troops and "fighters of terrorism" that prisoner abuse puts us all at a far greater risk which far outweighs any supposed benefits.

We will reap what we sow.

Have we lost our way? Don't we stand for any principles anymore? We seem to be abandoning the very beliefs that separate us from the "bad guys". How can we hold ourselves up as a model of freedom and democracy when we employ some of the very methods used by our enemies. I pray that the more principled of us will not lose our voice.

A bitter dish called "Gulag Americano".

American torture makes me want to weep.

Not proud about that, but I hope I'm not the only one, either.