Back? Did you read it? Okay. Show me the part where he says we've gained ANY advantage by torturing people.

The benefits of rendition are two, he says: getting terrorists behind bars, and obtaining physical evidence like computers and documents. I suppose we could get tips leading to the latter via torture, but S. doesn't make the connection. Indeed, he downplays the whole torture thing (while indirectly ridiculing the notion that we thought it "more likely than not" that our prisoners wouldn't be tortured, a crucial element in defending the legality of the renditions).

So, justify torture to your heart(?)'s content, but don't confuse it with what Scheuer wrote.

That is the fundamental difference between us. I have fought for my country, as have both my brothers. One of my kids was in Bosnia during Clinton's "occupation". One of my kids just got back from Fallujah after a tour with the 3rd Marines.

One of the things we have in common is that we have been willing to lay it all on the line so we could come home to people who would gladly trade our sacrifices for the moral security of feeling "right" as if pronouncing that judgment makes everything else they won't do (or say) somehow acceptable to the rest of society (that knows better), because they are cowards not worth saving and leeches who exist in the margins of humanity calling forth visions of a better world that will not exist as long as tyrants and terrorists do. Their whole approach to life makes my hair stand on end.

No, the Constitution won't protect you from people like me, but thank goodness there are people like me or you'd already be dead, gone, and forgotten instead of being able to enjoy the opportunity to deride those who will do what must be done so your sorry cowardly ass can sleep at night and get up the next day to generate a fresh wave of treacle.

There are some complicating factors.

We are at war with a group of people who would cheerfully cut your throat without a moment's thought to how you might feel about it.

Our only choice for survival means that we must (unfortunately) kill enough of them that the remainder come to the conclusion that they need to go about this in a different (non-violent) manner.

In World War II we had to kill millions of Japanese so we could save the remainder and save millions of additional American casualties.

The same holds true here. It's sad, but these are the realities we live with.

To ignore these realities and exercize sophistry is a sure way to ensure that 9/11 happens again on a scale so unimaginably horrible that even people such as yourself demand that we kill ALL of them.

Nay - stay your wrath for this program. It is what it is and produces what it produces. When it no longer serves our needs for the situation we find ourselves in then the program will no longer be utilized.

Bush on the other hand is just sending completely innocent people overseas for the express purpose of having them tortured for information. They don't even pretend a pretext of legality.

If you cannot see the difference you are blind.

The Democrats would prefer we unleash the power of Joan Baez on them and see if that makes them talk.

I also heard the Democrats would be pushing a new program to deprive terrorist prisoners of their evening meal dessert if they didn't start talking.

Then again, in a related development, I have been told by an unimpeachable source that the Democrats would like to offer bin Laden the DNC Party Chairmanship but since they can't find them either they had to settle for his deputy.