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Torture Bad

How can one support torture?

Let's even leave out the ethical/legal issues - and just focus on one fact many military/CIA officers agree on: torture doesn't work. Start prying off my fingernails and I'll confess to kidnapping the Lindberg baby or leaking nuclear secrets to the USSR/Stalin...

However - again, leaving out the ethical/legal issues - most Amercians support torture to some degree. Disturbingly, this includes a great deal of Catholics - who, according to one study, are more inclined to support torture.

We've come a long way from turn the other cheek, no? Abort a zygote; bad. Make a prisoner think you're drowning him...hey, he might divulge secrets.

So I guess I don't represent the majortity opinon, even though the ethical and - currently - legal frameworks are on my side. (The practical viewpoint, as the poll reveals, is the framework I'm backing the wrong pony on.)

Which makes me ashamed, as an Amercian and a person, that the U.S. Congress is actually engaging in debate over whether or not to give the Executive Branch carte blanche to torture, operate secret prison, exempt from any judicial oversight or prosection anyone engaging in torture and so on.

Is this the type of democracy we hope to bring to the Middle East? And we wonder why they really aren't embracing same...

One question I'd like the pollsters to ask people who give the thumbs-up to torture: "What if your wife/husband/mother/father etc. was whisked away in the middle of the night because she/he is suspected to be terror mastermind. Is torture, with no judicial oversight, no charges placed (i.e. no habeus corpus) and no information about that relative - including no confirmation/denial about this relative's apprehension to anyone outside the CIA (for example), still OK? Are you good with the torture of your relative?"

Because that's what's already happened to a lot of relatives, and - should the new torture conventions the Executive Branch is pushing for become law - could well happen to a lot of other relatives. This is not an abstract arguement - Americans have been plucked out of our sight and squirreled away, not just some guy in a beard spouting the Quran. (That doesn't make it any better/worse for me, but many folks - understandably - care more about their families than unknown families in some Third World country.)

Think about that. Your relative/co-worker/best friend just suddenly gone.

Imagine that moment.

Imagine that confusion.

Imagine your reaction to discover this person has been detained - with no charges - in some secret prison in some unknown country and is being treated in a manner that, if you treated your dog similarly, you'd be fined/arrested. With no recourse.

Imagine.