I guess I have to spell it out:

"We do not torture" applies to the policy of the United States as a whole. I suppose it is subject to what you might consider to be torture (see my comments above).

In Abu Ghraib, Reserve soldiers with limited training and supervision, were thrown into a difficult situation. Add a few dimented individuals and you get pyramids with panties. The officer responsible was reprimanded for not controlling the situation properly.

If you seriously believe that this in any way represents evidence ofthe President "lying", then you are lying to yourself.

It is right and proper that our American political process should expose our actions to the light and that we judge ourselves on those actions. The downside is that others will judge us too.

So a general has been discliplined in the Abu Ghraib torture scandel? Good there is some justice being applied then.

It is also very clear then, that Bush was lying when he said "We do not torture"

Thank you for being man enough to admit it.

:)

Second, I think most people would agree that sexual assault, personal injury, etc. are clearly torture and should NOT be condoned. However, there are those in this country that feel the protections of the Constitution should extend to non-citizens. Clearly, I do not. There are those who feel that combatants arrrested in an "illegal war" are "illegal prisoners". Surely you can appreciate the danger of releasing violent criminals who have taken arms up against us. So a "black and white" status is extremely difficult to get any agreement on.

Lastly, who is "WE"? I have a hard time lately referring to my fellow countrymen as "WE", because of a deep and ugly division. I will reiterate my earlier point about THEM: "The belief in their ideology, their self-defeating perspective that WE are evil, surpassed the belief in the moral values of their countrymen." With this mentality, the war is lost, the struggle for freedom and justice is pointless. Because regrdless of the good we do in the world, we are the criminals.

I still disagree with you about Viet Nam, but perhaps feel more strongly on Iraq. It's not so much the actions we undertake, or the policy, as it is the perspective of them. Not all Americans agree with you on Gulf 1. Many love to remind us of WWII internment camps. We get no credit whatsoever for providing military assistance in Kosovo, Bosnia, Somalia... THEIR agenda is clear.

You say if we take the higher ground (as we should) "We have allowed for stability and proven that we have honor."
I believe that is exactly what we have done. I believe in the character of our troops. I believe the military is effective in punishing policy violators. Congress has done the right thing and gone with a compromise bill. This country wasn't born yesterday. We, as all countries do, have some dark spots in our history. However, we more than any other continue seek the higher ground. Because those are the principles we were founded upon.

I think the important background issue is that we win this war and leave with an Iraq that can be self-policed. Can we agree on that?

Variables included in winning "hearts and minds" would include America's ability to claim with good justification that it does not torture captives. If there were no gray areas in the definition of torture, that statement would carry a lot of weight. For example, when the law in america is written that you can't smoke, those that choose to smoke see the law as a bad thing. There is nothing we can do about that. But when we tell them that the tobacco companies have systematically lied to them and mislead them with fake research and false claims about tobacco's safety, and marketed heavily to impressionable youth with the objective of creating the addiction before they are competent to really weigh the issue, our FDA's credibility comes into play. So too does the tobacco companies'. Who is telling the truth? As a consumer, do you trust the FDA? We have been told of Government's inefficiency and collective stupidity for a long time now. What if we choose to think that the FDA is lying? However, the track record of the FDA lying systematically didn't really start till after the tobacco issue was firmly planted in our collective minds through a concerted PR, Propoganda, Advertising, Education or whatever kind of program you want to call it. So they had a tremendous amount of legitimacy whereas the tobacco companies were caught lying over and over and over untill they had no real ability to convince us that they could be honest.

Now, if torture were black and white, there would be little question about whether it hampered our efforts to win "hearts and minds". Are you with me? So, if we define torture and then don't do what we have defined as torture, we have moral high ground. You may call incarcwerating someone torture but we don't so therefore, we are not torturing. Our rules are clearly laid out to the Iraqis and they know that we keep our word and so they are more likely to allow a government that we create.

Anyway, that's my contribution to the logical side of the debate.

My contribution to the moral side of the debate is that, I do not condone torture and I will revile those who do. If they are Americans that's too bad. I don't care who they are. They can't come to my house for dinner. I will not hjire them for a job. I will not speak up for them in court. I will not allow them a voice in my house. It is wrong for any reason. I will not lend my support to anyone who condones torture as I define it. Hooking electrodes to testicles and sodomizing prisoners with batons counts as torture in my book. Perhaps I need to define the gray areas myself but if the government would do it at least I would have a jumping off point.

You say:

No. Our power to win the war effort was hampered by those who would spread propaganda for their own political purposes, and spit in the faces of Veterans. The belief in their ideology, their self-defeating perspective that WE are evil, surpassed the belief in the moral values of their countrymen. Not brainwashed soldiers, or baby-killers, but the boy next-door (with an M-16). We haven’t learned a damned thing since then.

But I say that the reason that people decided that "we" are evil is because they couldn't morally condone our methods. It is tragic that they spit in the faces of the soldiers rather than the politicians but the fact is, Americans didn't want to fight that kind of a war.

There weren't very many people who spit in the faces of the WWII vets or the 1st Gulf War vets because, in WWII, we were attacked by the Japanese and in Gulf War 1 we made darn sure what we were doing before we did it and we got broad international support. Neither of those conditions were met by Gulf War II.

So if we don't call 5 meals a day torture and they do, so what? We have allowed for stability and proven that we have honor. If we allow torture, especially legislatively, then we are proving that we have no honor and it's gonna be hard to win hearts or minds.

Lets say I conceed that point, though I would like to see some documentation. Do you have a rebuttaly for "Fighting George's" skipping out 6 months early?

LDJ,

Good to see some accountability. Any senior officers among those disciplined?

Let's remember we're talking about individuals who, for their crimes may never again see the outside of a cell. Let's acknowledge that many of the ones we were encouraged to release, returned to the battlefield. Not because of how we treated them, but because they are evil and their ideology centers on the destruction of our way of life.

Let's put the shoe on the other foot here. Did the NVA use of torture prevent Jane Fonda from doing what she did? Does the insurgent kidnappings, beheadings, and bombings of innocent women and children prevent the anti-war crowd from thinking (even in this country) that we somehow deserve it? Does it rally non-violent Muslims to our side, to defeat this evil?

You say of Viet Nam "Our power to keep killing the resistors was hampered by domestic revultion at the methods we used to try to win that war. The American people rose up against an administration who thought that we could fight that way."

No. Our power to win the war effort was hampered by those who would spread propaganda for their own political purposes, and spit in the faces of Veterans. The belief in their ideology, their self-defeating perspective that WE are evil, surpassed the belief in the moral values of their countrymen. Not brainwashed soldiers, or baby-killers, but the boy next-door (with an M-16). We haven't learned a damned thing since then.

In Iraq, this same type of propaganda deeply damages the war effort, and our standing in the world community, much more deeply than the scandals themselves. So to answer your question, I would say of "torture" depending on what your defininton is, that no, it does not damage the war effort in comparison.

Let me qualify that by saying that I do not believe we should be applying thumb-srews or electrocuting people. The fact that there is bipartisan support for techniques outlined in the FM is a good thing for the future of this country.

GWB once refused to take a mandatory physical during wartime.

No, he didn't. The date of the physical he was allegedly ordered to take was a holiday. The order was a fake.

If torture is justified for short-term gain at the expense of long term gain then what we essentially have is a foriegn policy on crack. (That is a metaphor not a smart-assed comment) If we get a long term gain from using torture, i.e. information that allows us to win the war in Iraq, then all we are left with is the moral quandry (which is where I'm stuck).

So the machiavellian question is "does torture undermine our efforts to win the war - supposedly winnable only through hearts and minds - or does it have little negative long-term effects?

I would argue that, if it were me (and it takes someone pretty far right to call me a lefty), I would never submit to a foreign power who tortured my countrymen.

Viet-nam is instructional. The VC were able to recruit more and more people simply on the grounds that the Americans were killing them and they should resist. Our power to keep killing the resistors was hampered by domestic revultion at the methods we used to try to win that war. The American people rose up against an administration who thought that we could fight that way. So the national character, though nebulous, tended toward being opposed to torture which means that the military, in abandoning the moral high ground, abandoned its domestic support and was eventually strangled financially. It was a lousy way to end that particular foreign policy choice and we are running the risk of doing the same thing again-voting our guys out of iraq. That would have the REAL effect of dishonoring our troops' commitment to our country's foreign policy decisions.

It's no use to attempt to cite facts or to try and let Anjin San know anything that would show him that he is and has been on the "wrong side of the tracks". You are correct in your observation that Anjin is totally brainwashed by the ultra left wing extrenists. After all, what more would you expect from a California lefty. He tends to dwell on matters that were news long age and are no longer pertinant to whats going on today. He will do or say anything to "prove his point" even if it's a big fat lie like his extrenists buddies are spewing. I must also say that it is impossible to keep Anjin on subject as he only has the mental capacity to occasionally remember what what the actual subject is.

In other words LID, Once you have heard from Anjin on a post, you can expect for him to talk about it for months to come no matter what the current subject is,

Congress has no idea what works and what doesn’t. For one person torture may yield information that saves lives for another person it may not. I would defer to the people out there doing it to make that decision.

Hey, Steven---the McCain Amendment legally restricts U.S. personnel to the ARMY INTERROGATION MANUAL. You know, the people who DO have some "idea what works and what doesn't"?

The ones who have no idea are Cheney and his yes-men.

Note the following: "400 investigations by DoD into accusations of abuse with 230 determinations that have resulted in either reprimands or court martials." This is significant. We are policing ourselves, and the system is working. Allegations are being investigated, without input from the media or Anjin San (stuck on Abu Ghraib). We're running about a 58% conviction rate.

I sleep well at night knowing that Islamo-fascist extremists are awake listening to AC/DC.

Today's critics would complain that Christ wasn't fair because He never allowed Satan equal time on the Sermon on the Mount.

When you use power for the right and good things, don't apologize to those who prefer someone else's approval first!

The same blog also has a post by a conservative who explains why the republican party should not justify torture.