Reply #24: I think we really, REALLY need to make careful distinctions here, [View All]

between what may be a bad poll (poor questions, poor choices, stacked) and what the general range of polls is saying (Americans very opposed to torture). Also, even in this poll, you have 36% of Americans saying NEVER torture plus 23% of American saying torture is only RARELY justified (and note, they don't have the option of saying legal or illegal, or what should the general policy be?, or what circumstances?). This adds up to 58% saying NEVER or RARELY (i.e., unusual circumstances.) 58% of Americans say "Never or almost never torture." That should have been the headline. Or, "Americans mostly agree with the world on torture--never, or almost never, is it justified." Instead, they combine the "rarely's" with the "yes, it's justified's."

As I said, the article's text is really off base.

There is nothing that fills me more with revulsion and rage than this ENTIRELY UNNECESSARY violation of the heart and soul of America's ethical, justice-loving, law-abiding, peace-loving majority. What comes to me as an image is a child molester who is not satisfied with raping a child, but also wants to sully and degrade the child, to make her feel dirty, to compromise her sense of integrity and morality.

I often think of the young military lawyers I read about, who had devoted themselves to the Uniform Code of Military Justice (which incorporates the Geneva Conventions), and had based their careers on defending and enforcing it, and who fought long and hard against the Bushites' desire to torture people, and place them in piles of naked bodies, and set dogs upon them, and waterboard them, and beat them to death. How their souls must have been seered by this! And I also think of those who could not retain their integrity under the kind of pressure the Bushites have put on people--who compromised, who broke law and conscience, and now have to live with themselves.

We now find out that they have secret prisons, where we have no idea what George Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Condoleeza Rice are doing to people, or who they are doing it to, or why. Nameless prisoners in some dark dungeon somewhere.

They want to break our spirit, as a people. To sully our ideals. To crap upon everything we hold dear.

It is the most unforgivable thing they've done--to rob people of their souls is worse than killing them.