Spin, baby, spin.

Seconded.

*Whatever* we did, the very IDEA of "softening up" prisoners for Chinese interrogators is stomach-turning. Our loving emulation of Communist methods has sunk to new lows.

Hey, it's your *moderate* conservative views that keep me coming here, so keep up the good work and ignore the trolls who constantly whine about you guys being "apologists" or whatever. You guys are some of the few reasonable conservatives I can read these days without wondering if most conservatives have lost their minds.

Anyway, I just wanted to weigh in here to say that those who at this time and after everything that has been revealed still believe that the Bush Administration did not sanction torture, or who apparently think that torture consists of nothing more than a few hours in the cold and a "dunk in the water," are not treating this issue with the seriousness it deserves. It's not like there has been some murky, barely corroborated allegation here. There is in fact solid evidence of systematic abuse and torture of detainees sanctioned at the highest levels.

It had been America's proud tradition of being a country of laws and high principles that had made us the envy of the world. It is also our principles that separate us from the terrorists. If we deign it OK to torture, or even come close to torture, because "they would do the same to us" (or whatever,) how does that make us better than them? What moral high ground can we then legitimately claim?

I'm with Alex: whether two or two million were tortured is irrelevant. We need principles precisely for situations like this, not in spite of them. You don't become the enemy to beat the enemy.

Torture??... Heck that sounds like the democrats new tax policy!

This reminds me a lot of a nearby OTB post about Hillary Clinton hoping something bad will happen to Obama.

Anyway, thanks for the references. I didn't come up with thousands of cases, but certainly dozens. The problem is you're defining down torture to a near meaningless level. You're also suggesting that the abuses that did occur are standard procedure. Do you find it a bit ironic that a film named "standard operating procedure" is a story about a couple of psychopaths that abused prisoners for fun (not information) and took pictures over the course of a single day? They were then prosecuted. If one cop abuses a prisoner, can you then say all cops do and that it is standard procedure?

Can you provide some reference for "a few thousand". Can you provide any evidence that people were tortured if torture is defined as it was pre 2002 (e.g., not being housed in the Four Seasons, I don't consider torture)?

Well, the Roosevelt quote referenced above was that President's response to American soliders waterboarding detainees, so yeah... Also, sleep deprivation and hypothermia are classic Gestapo techniques.

Anyways, as for evidence, there's tons of it out there. You'd have to be willfully blind to not have encountered it. But here's a couple of starting points:

The documentary "Standard Operating Procedure".

The book "The Torture Papers: The Road to Abu Ghraib" edited by Karen J. Greenberg and Joshua L. Dratel

The numerous FBI reports on the torture and abuse of detainees, available online.

And here's the Inspector General's report referenced in this article:
http://www.usdoj.gov/oig/special/s0805/final.pdf

Can you provide some reference for "a few thousand". Can you provide any evidence that people were tortured if torture is defined as it was pre 2002 (e.g., not being housed in the Four Seasons, I don't consider torture)?

As for ends justifying the means, well yeah, in war sometimes they do. See for example: any war in the history of humanity. Having a terrorist be a little chilly versus thousands of dead innocents. You decide.

forced to endure cold for hours on end

I guess it is all relative in the tropics. Looking at monthly averages in Jan and Feb the temp gets down to 67F, with a high of 81F. Oh the horror!

I imagine they could have cranked up the AC.

You might notice things are a bit more severe and have nothing to do with attaining information in order to save innocent lives.

So now the ends justify the means?

Are you aware that millions of people died in Stalin's camps?

The moral equivalence is beyond ridiculous.

Just because we've tortured and abused a few thousand people instead of a few million doesn't mean we're just as wrong as the Soviets were.