Of course our laws must be abided by everyone living here, and prosecution and punishment for offenders must be put in place. But to impose our christian believes and ethics on people with other believes is against the constitution.

Even if it were not ethically wrong, think of the consequences, if we, as members of the civilized world, would start allowing torture when it fits our interests?

We know torture can probably not be totally eradicated, but for us to condone it, to make it acceptable by allowing or even asking for it, is a step back towards midieval conditions and tyranny.

And what about our Christian believes? Are our Christian ethics only meant for the Sunday services at church? What hipocrisy to call ourselves Christians, if we don’t even try to live up to our most important Christian ethics!

What kind of an example do we give to the world by torturing our enemies? Are we still an “authority” on Democracy, imposing such rule on others???

We need to rise above our fears and vengence and show the world what true Democracy stands for, how it is operative even in adverse circumstances and stay true to our values, especially also when it is difficult.

It seems that many Americans are dissing our Constitution. We need more like Justice Sanders to lead our country in the right direction.

Again, thanks for the post.

do I understand you your meaning to be the Honorable Judge Saunders was wrong in calling Mukasey a tyrant and walking out? If so on that we can disagree as I would have done as he did (and have).

Any Judge who is standing for the Constitution and not using a sandwedge to do so is a winner in my book.

And Hey! What could be better than a judge who likes “The X-files”? From his site; “The Truth Is Out There”

If you ask people what the fourth of July is about how many people would know?

I badly frightened when asking my then 10th grade daughter the same question.

She said it was about fireworks. She has learned since then. After I told her if she wanted me to pay for her college education, she had to “pass” this quiz and do one other thing, VOTE.

People like you scare the hell out of me — because you don’t know what you’re talking about — and you seem to believe this line of BS.

Torture doesn’t work — for all the reasons that sane and logical people understand. (I’m not going to rewrite that book here.)

One of the major reasons NOT to torture POWs is that there are rules of war — and our guys can become POWs — we hope that the enemy treats our troops as we treat their troops — oops that won’t work since the US now tortures captured individuals — can’t say that all the individuals are soldiers or involved in armed resistance — but we do know that some of the individuals that the US had/have in prisons were SOLD to the US by other countries (or indivduals). So the US was buying people who they were told were “bad guys” — these people were then tortured — and of course some of these people were going to tell torturers whatever they wanted to hear.

But mostly I’m against torture because I want our troops to be treated well if they are captured — I don’t want their children back home to become orphans.

I was raised in the military — born in a military hospital so in a way I’ll never be a “full” civilian — I know what it’s like to have a parent flying over “enemy” territory and knowing that he could be shot down.

As for arguing whether conduct imposed on a class of individuals is allowed under international law… such laws only establish the floor of acceptable conduct. Parsing words so as to find legitimate claim to embracing the floor is, to coin a phrase, beneath us.

The management of the WOT has prevented another terrorist attack on US soil since 2001.

Yours is a classic post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy. You need to go back and take Logic 101.

When they were doing their beheadings, my first thought was, “Thank God we do not do such things.”

I watched a History Channel or Public channel showw (can’t remenber which) recently about this whole issue. My thought was this: I am so happy my two boys, one who did do military service and one who did not, will never have to be placed in a position to be ordered to do the things our military personnel are being asked to do. It harms their souls, psyches–or whatever you want to call it.

No Torture Allowed Ever should be our firm commitment.