The ticking time bomb scenario is probably the best debated scenario because it represents the most acceptable rationale for torture because it is ultimately argued from a utility perspective: if pressed with two bad options, the loss of thousands of lives or the incredible pain of one, which option leaves a worse taste in our mouth?

The problem with this approach is its failure to ask a key question. We do not approach utility unconditionally; many person's lives are not assumed valuable in our equation. We don't, for example, allow a murderer to claim "If you sentence me to death it would hurt me" as a reasonable defense. The assumption is that this person has violated their "right not to be killed".

We also do not think it is wrong to attack and kill enemy combatants. Again the assumption is that these people have abandoned their "right not to be attacked" by engaging in certain kinds of behaviour. Saddam Hussein seems to be one of these types of people.

But why? What has Saddam done to warrant our refusal to extend to him the "right not to be attacked"? It is precisely those morally bankrupt behaviors that we are focused on in this debate, like torture or gassing one's population, that gives us sufficient pause in considering his well being when we rule against him.

No one has argued successfully that torture is justified in and of itself. All arguments are predicated upon an ends-justify-means basis because it would be an impossibly difficult task to speak on the merits of torture (of which there are none) without mentioning the merely potential merits of the result of torture (perhaps saving lives)

If we think persons such as Saddam Hussein have the ability to sacrifice their "right not to be attacked" then we need to extend this qualification to all persons as a matter of consistency.

We should hope that if the United States of America is functioning as a Democracy it is only engaging in behavior that the population accepts. If the population accepts torture than all American citizens are, at the very least, complicit in torture.

And thus the argument is self-defeating. If we must argue from a utility standpoint that torture protects lives, we are already assuming that those lives are worth protecting. But if we accept that torture is the type of egregious sin that can possibly result in the loss of "rights not to be attacked" than the argument falters. By accepting torture as a viable defense strategy, a democratic population admits that it has no right to claim any defensive strategy.

Further discussion should explain why populations that torture people deserve to be defended in the first place. Until you can establish the incorrectly assumed "rights" of people who torture, the ticking-time-bomb scenario is illogical.

The ticking time bomb assumes that there are innocent lives to be saved. But in so far as those "innocents" are at least complicit in the crime of torture, in what sense are they "innocent" at all?

The reason that Americans are "innocent" and terrorists are not is because we correctly identify torture as morally bankrupt (as the Senate claimed unanimously last week) and the enemy does not.

The U.S. has been torturing people for a very long time. We used to not know anything about it, but now there are nasty little leaks all over Washington and abroad. So, the question is "Did the use of torture for all these years by the CIA and other military outfits really work -or- has it just been snowballing all these years into a huge mass of ineffectiveness...and now we truly see the error of our ways?

Is much of the intelligence we have now a result of successful torture -or- merely the inferior security of our enemies?

I don't think any of us civilians can say for sure. And could we trust someone who is former Company or a Veteran Intel officer to tell us the absoulte truth? Could that person tell us the truth without being placed in a Gulag?

We can argue on the propriety of the treatment of terrorists until we are blue in the face. But what is the argument if we don't know all of the answers? What is the answer if it is not torture....bribery, sending them to bed without dinner?

Maybe torture isn't the most morally acceptable means. War is not morally acceptable either, but it is acceptable. At its core, war exists because it is for the greater good. Not all wars are for the greater good, but those like WWI and WWII were just that. Is it moral to kill...no. Is it acceptable to kill in times of war for the greater good....yes.

Perhaps the War in Iraq is not acceptable, but the war on terror is. And if we have to torture terrorists for valuable information...so be it. Would you rest better knowing your employment building was next on the list and the attempt had been thwarted -or- that some hatefully violent people got 3 HOTS and a Cot while staying tightlipped, awaiting their release from prison?

To Will: You could argue from a utility standpoint that torture should be outlawed the same way we have speed limits - the law preserves the common good. We don't prosecute everyone who tortures (the CIA) and we don't prosecute everyone who speeds (someone on the way to the hospital).

I appreciate the distinction but as far as my argument goes I believe it is irrelevant. We prosecute everyone who speeds "unlawfully" (or try to) and we make exemptions because often times we think speeding is justifiable. So is homicide (self defense).

Some behaviors are NEVER justifiable. The best example that comes to mind is rape. I happen to beleive that torture is also one of those kinds of behavior.

I have presented one reason we might reject torture-that-saves-lives as "justifiable".

Suppose you capture a member of Al Queda in your hometown, carrying a suicide bomb, yet the bomb failed to go off. You are given the decision to lock him in jail for a trial, or be handed over to a government agency to be interrogated and possibly never seen again. What do you do?

To Will: So you would say that if you captured a suicide bomber, it wouldn't be permissible to torture him (or her) to find out if there are other suicide bombers nearby?

The ticking time bomb analogy seems to be the only reasonable justification for torture. I have criticized that analogy because I do not think torture is morally justifiable.

If we presented the analogy but instead of "innocent lives" we substituted "Saddam Hussein" less people would be willing to accept its premise. We wouldn't want to torture anyone to save Saddam Hussein's life because we think he is guilty of moral crimes, for example.

If distinctions between "innocent lives" and "Saddam Hussein" are to be at all meaningful they have to describe something tangible. One of the things that distinguishes those two entities are that "innocent lives" haven't tortured people and Saddam Hussein has. If, as I have argued, the "innocent lives" we are describing are complicit in the crime of "torture" (by voting for people who torture others, for example) than in what sense are they "innocent"?

Why should I be interested in the safety of someone who tortures?

To Will: Babies are innocent, and haven't voted for Saddam. Maybe we can torture potential baby killers?

The ticking time bomb analogy describes a group "innocent lives" and I was trying to point out why that description is erroneous.

Wars are justifiable even if they cost "innocent lives". Not everyone voted for Hitler and many people who probably voted against him died as a result of United States military operations in Germany. I would argue that those deaths are justifiable.

Some entities can be justifiably attacked so to say that some action (torture) "saves innocent lives" needs to ask the important question of whether or not those lives are indeed innocent. One of the reasons that we were justified in invading Germany in World War 2 was because it tortured large amount of people (concentration camps).

The time bomb analogy assumes that the entity to be defended is the kind who it would be unjust to attack. I'm trying to point out that the fact that America doesn't torture people is precisely WHY it would be unjust for someone to bomb us.

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Has American democracy died an electronic death in Ohio 2005's referenda defeats?
By Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman
Online Journal Contributing Writers

Nov 14, 2005, 00:12

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While debate still rages over Ohio's stolen presidential election of 2004, the impossible outcomes of key 2005 referendum issues may have put an electronic nail through American democracy.

Once again, the Buckeye state has hosted an astonishing display of electronic manipulation that calls into question the sanctity of America's right to vote, and to have those votes counted in this crucial swing state.

The controversy has been vastly enhanced due to the simultaneous installation of new electronic voting machines in nearly half the state's 88 counties, machines the General Accountability Office has now confirmed could be easily hacked by a very small number of people.

Last year, the US presidency was decided here. This year, a bond issue and four hard-fought election reform propositions are in question.

Issue One on Ohio's 2005 ballot was a controversial $2 billion "Third Frontier" proposition for state programs ostensibly meant to create jobs and promote high tech industry. Because some of the money may seem destined for stem cell research, Issue One was bitterly opposed by the Christian Right, which distributed leaflets against it.

The Issue was pushed by a Taft administration wallowing in corruption. Governor Bob Taft recently pleaded guilty to misdemeanors stemming from golf outings he took with Tom Noe, the infamous Toledo coin dealer who has taken $4 million or more from the state. Taft entrusted Noe with some $50 million in investments for the Ohio Bureau of Workers' Compensation, from which some $12 million is now missing. Noe has been charged with federal money laundering violations on behalf of the Bush-Cheney campaign. Taft's public approval ratings in Ohio are currently around 15 percent.

Despite public fears the bond issue could become a glorified GOP slush fund, Issue One was supported by organized labor. A poll run on the front page of the Columbus Dispatch on Sunday, November 6, showed Issue One passing with 53 percent of the vote. Official tallies showed Issue One passing with 54 percent of the vote.

The polling used by the Dispatch had wrapped up the Thursday before the Tuesday election. Its precision on Issue One was consistent with the Dispatch's historic polling abilities, which have been uncannily accurate for decades. This poll was based on 1,872 registered Ohio voters, with a margin of error at plus/minus 2.5 percentage points and a 95 percent confidence interval. The Issue One outcome would appear to confirm the Dispatch polling operation as the state's gold standard.

But Issues 2-5 are another story.

The Dispatch's Sunday headline showed "3 issues on way to passage." The headline referred to Issues One, Two and Three. As mentioned, the poll was dead-on accurate for Issue One.

Issues Two-Five were meant to reform Ohio's electoral process, which has been under intense fire since 2004. The issues were very heavily contested. They were backed by Reform Ohio Now, a well-funded bi-partisan statewide effort meant to bring some semblance of reliability back to the state's vote count. Many of the state's best-known moderate public figures from both sides of the aisle were prominent in the effort. Their effort came largely in response to the stolen 2004 presidential vote count that gave George W. Bush a second term and led to U.S. history's first congressional challenge to the seating of a state's delegation to the Electoral College.

Issue Two was designed to make it easier for Ohioans to vote early, by mail or in person. By election day, much of what it proposed was already put into law by the state legislature. Like Issue One, it was opposed by the Christian Right. But it had broad support from a wide range of Ohio citizen groups. In a conversation the day before the vote, Bill Todd, a primary official spokesperson for the opposition to Issues Two through Five, told attorney Cliff Arnebeck that he believed Issues Two and Three would pass.

The November 6 Dispatch poll showed Issue Two passing by a vote of 59 percent to 33 percent, with about 8 percent undecided, an even broader margin than that predicted for Issue One.

But on November 8, the official vote count showed Issue Two going down to defeat by the astonishing margin of 63.5 percent against, with just 36.5 percent in favor. To say the outcome is a virtual statistical impossibility is to understate the case. For the official vote count to square with the pre-vote Dispatch poll, support for the Issue had to drop more than 22 points, with virtually all the undecideds apparently going into the "no" column.

The numbers on Issue Three are even less likely.

Issue Three involved campaign finance reform. In a lame duck session at the end of 2004, Ohio's Republican legislature raised the limits for individual donations to $10,000 per candidate per person for anyone over the age of six. Thus a family of four could donate $40,000 to a single candidate. The law also opened the door for direct campaign donations from corporations, something banned by federal law since the administration of Theodore Roosevelt.

The GOP measure sparked howls of public outrage. Though again opposed by the Christian Right, Issue Three drew an extremely broad range of support from moderate bi-partisan citizen groups and newspapers throughout the state. The Sunday Dispatch poll showed it winning in a landslide, with 61 percent in favor and just 25 percent opposed.

Tuesday's official results showed Issue Three going down to defeat in perhaps the most astonishing reversal in Ohio history, claiming just 33 percent of the vote, with 67 percent opposed. For this to have happened, Issue Three's polled support had to drop 28 points, again with an apparent 100 percent opposition from the previously undecideds.

The reversals on both Issues Two and Three were statistically staggering, to say the least.

The outcomes on Issue Four and Five were slightly less dramatic. Issue Four meant to end gerrymandering by establishing a non-partisan commission to set congressional and legislative districts. The Dispatch poll showed it with 31 percent support, 45 percent opposition, and 25 percent undecided. Issue Four's final margin of defeat was 30 percent in favor to 70 percent against, placing virtually all undecideds in the "no" column.

Issue Five meant to take administration of Ohio's elections away from the Secretary of State, giving control to a nine-member non-partisan commission. Issue Five was prompted by Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell's administration of the 2004 presidential vote, particularly in light of his role as co-chair of Ohio's Bush-Cheney campaign. The Dispatch poll showed a virtual toss-up, at 41 percent yes, 43 percent no and 16 percent undecided. The official result gave Issue Five just 30 percent of the vote, with allegedly 70 percent opposed.

But the Sunday Dispatch also carried another headline: "44 counties will break in new voting machines." Forty-one of those counties "will be using new electronic touch screens from Diebold Election System," the Dispatch added.

Diebold's controversial CEO Walden O'Dell, a major GOP donor, made national headlines in 2003 with a fundraising letter pledging to deliver Ohio's 2004 electoral votes to Bush.

Every vote in Ohio 2004 was cast or counted on an electronic device. About 15 percent -- some 800,000 votes -- were cast on electronic touchscreen machines with no paper trail. The number was about seven times higher than Bush's official 118,775-vote margin of victory. Nearly all the rest of the votes were cast on punch cards or Scantron ballots counted by opti-scan devices -- some of them made by Diebold -- then tallied at central computer stations in each of Ohio's 88 counties.

According to a recent General Accountability Office report, all such technologies are easily hacked. Vote skimming and tipping are readily available to those who would manipulate the vote. Vote switching could be especially easy for those with access to networks by which many of the computers are linked. Such machines and networks, said the GAO, had widespread problems with "security and reliability." Among them were "weak security controls, system design flaws, inadequate security testing, incorrect system configuration, poor security management and vague or incomplete voting system standards, among other issues."

With the 2005 expansion of paperless touch-screen machines into 41 more Ohio counties, this year's election was more vulnerable than ever to centralized manipulation. The outcomes on Issues 2-5 would indicate just that.

The new touchscreen machines were brought in by Blackwell, who had vowed to take the state to an entirely e-based voting regime.

As in 2004, there were instances of chaos. In inner city, heavily Democratic precincts in Montgomery County, the Dayton Daily News reported: "Vote count goes on all night: Errors, unfamiliarity with computerized voting at heart of problem." Among other things, 186 memory cards from the e-voting machines went missing, prompting election workers in some cases to search for them with flashlights before all were allegedly found.

In Tom Noe's Lucas County, Election Director Jill Kelly explained that her staff could not complete the vote count for 13.5 hours because poll workers "were not adequately trained to run the new machines."

But none of the on-the-ground glitches can begin to explain the impossible numbers surrounding the alleged defeat of Issues Two through Five. The Dispatch polling has long been a source of public pride for the powerful, conservative newspaper, which endorsed Bush in 2004.

The Dispatch was somehow dead accurate on Issue One, and then staggeringly wrong on Issues Two through Five. Sadly, this impossible inconsistency between Ohio's most prestigious polling operation and these final official referendum vote counts have drawn virtually no public scrutiny.

Though there were glitches, this year's voting lacked the massive irregularities and open manipulations that poisoned Ohio in 2004. The only major difference would appear to be the new installation of touchscreen machines in those additional 41 counties.

And thus the possible explanations for the staggering defeats of Issues Two through Five boil down to two: either the Dispatch polling -- dead accurate for Issue One -- was wildly wrong beyond all possible statistical margins of error for Issues 2-5, or the electronic machines on which Ohio and much of the nation conduct their elections were hacked by someone wanting to change the vote count.

If the latter is true, it can and will be done again, and we can forget forever about the state that has been essential to the election of every Republican presidential candidate since Lincoln.

And we can also, for all intents and purposes, forget about the future of American democracy.
Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman are co-authors of HOW THE GOP STOLE AMERICA'S 2004 ELECTION & IS RIGGING 2008, available at www.freepress.org, and, with Steve Rosenfeld, of WHAT HAPPENED IN OHIO, to be published this spring by The New Press.

Well, the debate's still going strong on the other page it started on. If some of it is moving here, I'd just like to say those that are pro-torture keep saying 'if torture works, so be it'. Torture isn't water, people; Torture is torture. You can't just say 'so be it' and not think there will be serious ramifications to our nation if we adopt torture as an acceptable American standard. Taking that 'so be it' step WILL come with a price. Maybe you need to drop the paranoia and hysteria for a second so you can fully think through an American government that tortures as policy. But you're too frightened by 9/11 to do that, apparently.
What is really beginning to bother me about this debate is that the pro-torture crowd (a minority here) seems to have very little faith in our great nation. Why is it that suddenly you consider the United States of America is in need of adopting torture to win it's wars and achieve it's goals? We didn't need it in the past, so why do we need it now? Desperately grasping at torture as a tool is the mark of a coward. We can play fair AND win this war on terror. To disagree with that is to say this country is weak. To suggest we need torture is to suggest we don't have what it takes to defeat the terrorists and prevent their attacks without resorting to the use of torture.
Now, if you want to say we've been using torture for years anyway, that is a valid point in and of itself, but what we are discussing here is an open policy of America and Americans condoning torture as an acceptable practice. That's a whole other ballgame than whatever covert operations may or may not have occurred in the past that may or may not have involved torture. Either way, I still feel torture is un-American and should not be done by our government; In fact, the Constitution is very clear that things 'cruel and unusual' are NOT to be perpetuated, and were not 'American' in the eyes of our founding fathers. We would be fools to suddenly doubt and ditch their wisdom just 'cause we can't keep our cool in the face of this Al Qaeda threat.
Thing is, this isn't some desperate battle for survival where we have to resort to whatever it takes to win, no matter how lowdown and dirty it may be. This is a battle where we are still very much the superior force. We can win this war on terror without using torture, so let's do just that. Let us as Americans defeat these terrorists while maintaining the higher moral ground; Not only can we beat them, but we can beat them without compromising our standards, without relenting a single speck of what has made and will continue to make the USA the great nation it is. Let's stop arguing, and let's all agree that torture is beneath our dignity and time-honored American values. That we've even gotten this far into the torture debate is downright shameful. Don't let the terrorists compromise us like this any longer.

The discussion on torture seems to get bogged down in senseless hairsplitting on the one hand and the most extreme abstraction on the other.

You have two clear cases of torture: Guantanamo Bay and Abu Graib; torture bunkers run by the CIA overseas. The Vice President wants CIA be exempted from the law that torture is illegal according to international and US law.

So, that amounts to just one thing: is torture to be outlawed per se, or are there exceptions?

Torture is wrong not because someone says so, but because it goes against what human beings are in their very being. - it is an attack on their humanity.

All other doomsday scenarios like allowing the torture of one individual in order to get information on other terrorists etc. are ridiculous because they are soooo.... hypothetical. The presumption here is that the piece of information obtained through torture is going to be useful in preventing an attack. How do you know that's what's going to happen? What if false information is given because of the pain inflicted on the torturer? How do you know that the detinee is "valuable?" By torturing him?

It all seems so weird. Now think of it this way: you want to impose a law which you apply to some people but not to yourself. You want to have the freedom to torture some because you think they are against you. What if that other person were to claim the same right because he thinks you are against him?

So, it all boils down to the age-old golden rule: DO NOT DO UNTO OTHERS WHAT YOU DON'T WANT DONE UNTO YOU. And that means: "don't justify torture;" "don't create exceptions because they will come back to haunt you" (as has already happened in the Iraq affair).

Nice of Emily Messner to start a new thread off based on the posters who debated her earlier "torture" thread. So sorry if it appears as ingratitude, Emily, but I must say something about your view of extremists:

"Extremists are a tiny proportion of Muslims, just like they're a tiny proportion of Christians and a tiny proportion of Jews and a tiny proportion of Hindus."

I honestly don't think all the world's religions have the same number of violent extremists therein, nor are the predilictions of the vast majority in how they react to extremist violence in any way similar. There is simply no equivalency between radical Islam's effect on both Muslims and "infidels that must die" - and extremists of other religions.
Nor in the general reluctance of "moderate Muslims" to regularly and in large numbers denounce extremist Islamist's attacks on Jews, Christians, heretic Muslims.

When Baruch Goldstein killed a dozen plus Muslims in Hebron, Jews everywhere condemned his terrorism. Hindis regularly denounce Hindu extremists and punish fringe parties associated with their extremism. Same with Christians, who together with Jews and Hindis, account for less than 2% of reported acts of terrorism from 1990-2003. National liberation movements (inc Muslims) and narco-terrorists for 9%. Muslims for the other 89%.

Certain true moderate Muslims have despaired over the Islamic world's "Code of Silence" in not commenting on radical Islamist atrocities or the propensity to blame the acts on the Jews. Deep down though, Muslims are keenly aware they are becoming almost synonymous with the practice of terrorism, as one Egyptian said after Beslan:

"It is a sad, terribly sad state of affairs where one knows that almost all of us(Muslims) are not terrorists, yet knows almost all terrorists are Muslims."

Back to torture topic.

I think one of the great points of confusion is that some feel we have a moral obligation to treat uniformed POWs complying with laws of war, indigenous insurgents who are unable to openly field a uniformed army but who otherwise mostly strive to hew to laws of war, and unlawful combatants who reject all or most laws of war - treat them all the same with no "down side" for being unlawful combatants.

They do not realize that US law (unanimous Ex Parte Quirin) and past practice, plus the Geneva Conventions - clearly distinguish between the three groups and have a major objective to strongly discourage uniformed soldiers and insurgents from becoming unlawful combatants. People forget that in the Revolutionary War, War of 1812, Civil War, WWI, WWII, and Korea that enemy found behind our lines out of uniform were systematically executed. On summary order or by verdict of a military tribunal within days of apprehension. The reason for this is not sadism towards unlawful combatants - but recognition that they were many times more lethal in not wearing display that clearly marked them as combatants and that their harboring in a civilian population endangered those civilians to a great degree. And those unlawful enemy who are terrorists in practice further engage in slaughter of innocent civilians rather than hard military targets, putting themselves even further outside the Hague and Geneva Conventions ---so both Conventions make a point that unlawful combatants are not in any way protected parties if captured, nor are they due automatic treatment as "civilians". Both Conventions have no problem with killing unlawful combatants on the spot.

The very nature of the unlawful combatant compells coercive interrogation and acknowledgement that some innocents may be swept up in order to defeat an enemy organization not openly distinguishing themselves from a civilian population. If enemy combatants are terrorists, we cannot just deploy soldiers and police to identify the enemy by their green Jihadi headbands and forest green uniforms with red-checked scarfs - then engage them. To defeat them, we must find a few and use those few to find others hiding in the civilian populations. It is imperative to wrap these deadly groups up, and I have heard no credible ideas coming out of the liberal camp that substsitute for coercive interrogation. Stuff like "be nice to them and they will love us" then reject their God and ideology and talk freely. Or, give them all free lawyers the US taxpayer foots, and offer every Jihadi a trial - which will so impress them with America's goodness and freedoms that they will cry and beg us to forgive them for being so mean. And release all who are not "criminals". Funny, of course, given there is no "crime", for example, to being a Yemeni national Jihadi terrorist on an expired Visa caught with floor plans to a local synogogue with security guard locations, ventilation ducts, and estimated number of "eliminatable children spawn of the Zionists" over at the childrens activity center in the synogogue....Yep, send that one back into the population on his own recognisance until he appeals his immigration case or until he commits "an actual crime"!

Or, a final liberal defense of terrorists is that these are oppressed people that just need the "root causes" of anger like joblessness and poverty addressed...

None of those fine ideas has a chance against a committed enemy that thinks they are winning against a soft, decadent Western culture. It is telling we had no immigration permitted from fascist countries years before and during WWII, no effort to fight the war by addressing the "root causes" of Japanese anger, no pointing out that most Germans were moderate and only 2% belonged to the Nazi Party, or no lawyers and full due process civvie trials were ever offered for the 750,000 German POWs we had in the USA under the notion that if they were "criminally innocent" they would be free to rejoin the Luftwaffe or Wehrmacht.

This is similar to insurgents, but the world largely agrees that native insurgents have more rights until they engage in other acts that make them unlawful combatants - like Iraqi Sunni insurgents going after Shiites in their mosques with car bombs.

And once unlawful combatants are captured, their fate for violating all rules of warfare should be leniency in return for information - or no leniency granted.

I am still hopeful that we will come up with a reasonable policy. Right now the blind opposition to any coercive measure in interrogating the enemy in order to root the rest of them out - is a subtrefuge for the real beef - "We hate George Bush more than anything". Another huge attack on America would instantly change that, refocus America on the fact we face an enemy every bit as evil as the Nazis or Stalinists that must be defeated -and put the Leftists and libertarian party on the run, but no one wants that. Eventually, we will reach new social norms that better define torture and what constitutes "terrorism". It would be better if we do not pay in American lives because some have such absurdly high "scruples" they endanger their fellow citizens by insisting that no interrogation take place unless the Muslim jihadi "is OK with it".

As a rationale for torture, the ticking time bomb scenario is a chimera. There would be no reliance on any information since the person being tortured expects to die, and has no pragmatic reason to divulge truthful information.
Torture is reprehensible because it encourages reciprocal treatment, and from that point on, the "slippery slope" becomes a sheer drop. No thinking military commander would sanction it because of the implications for his/her soldiers. And let's face it, Ghost of Patton sounds more like Ghost of Limbaugh or Liddy than a thinking person.
Defining torture is indeed problematic; the standard is probably akin to Potter Srewart's definition of obscenity("I know it when I see it").
Finally, we should set the standard for how we treat our enemies, because anything less is simply Darwinian, or a triumph of power rather than principle.

As to the hypothetical question of if I captured an Al Queda member, yes, I would turn them in to be interrogated. I would NOT turn them in to be tortured, however. There is a huge difference in my view between the two, and I believe most Americans share this outlook (and were sickened by the black spot on our nation's history and honor that happenned at Abu Ghraib). Interrogation? By all means. Torture? Not in my country! Not in my name!
Any other hypothetical situations to throw out there?

Chris,

Your points are well received.

You've made a moral distinction about terrorists, namely that they are evil. I agree, they are evil. America is not evil. I assumed (perhaps incorrectly) that one of the reasons that terrorists are "evil" and Americans are not is because American do not torture people and terrorists do.

Do you disagree?

JD is quoted as saying, of Islamist terrorists, "They do not know or understand our way of life."

With respect, I'm tempted to say the same thing about people over here who support torture by our government.

ErrinF writes:

"Why is it that suddenly you consider the United States of America is in need of adopting torture to win it's wars and achieve it's goals? We didn't need it in the past, so why do we need it now? Desperately grasping at torture as a tool is the mark of a coward. We can play fair AND win this war on terror. To disagree with that is to say this country is weak.

1. We generally faced identifiable foes in the past who did not primarily target soft-defended civilian populations and who fought us on the field of battle. Even the NVA and VC were more open fighters than the radical Islamic Jihadis. When we found the enemy straying into unlawful combat, attempting to infiltrate our lines out of uniform, summary execution was the normal American response - (for the 1st 180 years of our history).

2. But even in past wars, the knowledge that enemy info can save thousands of lives by beating up even killing one enemy captured is pretty irresistable. In the Civil War, a captured enemy courier or high-ranked officer got the 5th degree and then some, because that one enemy life was worth inflicting pain on, even death, to save thousands of your brother soldiers. Even after Hague and Geneva, we gave coercive interrogations that involved threats, slapping around, sleep deprivation - etc. in Vietnam. Which to an America-hater, are as clearly "torture" as fingernail pulling, the dread "panties on the head", and the awful unspeakable "Koran abuse"..

3. The mark of a coward is not making an unlawful combatant pay for flouting the rules of war. The Frenchman Roger Trinquier posted an excellent essay on the tradeoffs an unlawful combatant makes, that they must be willing to accept. (I put the URL on the last thread) By not fighting in uniform and targeting secretaries in the WTC, flight attendents, and peaceful Shiite mosque-goers or pregnant unarmed Israeli females - they are far safer than a soldier who stands distinguished by uniform as a bona-fide target of the enemy on the field of battle. So when they are caught, they have to accept the down side, that they will pay a hell of a price for violating laws of war. (Except Lefties who think unlawful combatants deserve even more rights than enemy in uniform)

4. The mark of the coward really should go to those that rationalized their way out of intervening in the Rwanda genocide by their very "concern" over human rights. If we had gone in and shot any Hutu with a machete that ran away from us, surely "innocent Hutus merely cutting crops and startled by white oppressor race people suddenly showing up" would have been killed, high ranking staffers in Clinton's administration argued. And no time existed for a full Congressional vote on war. Nor did the so-called "supreme moral and legal authority", the UN, seemed inclined to cheer an American intervention. And what if some of the Hutus rounded up were innocent? With no lawyers or trials. Better to sit back than expose ourselves legally...concluded the Clinton Team Lawyers. Clinton said later his instincts were to go in and he was argued out of it, and he regrets that to this day.

5. Errin has never been in the military. It is no game Errin, and the last thing we soldiers or Vets ever want is a "fair fight", playing "fair" with an evenly matched opponent.

6. Without coerced interrogations, the only we we will identify the Jihadists in our midst is surveillance such as wiretaps, informers, checking on suspected terrorist's records. But the same people that oppose "tooooooortuuuuuure!!" also oppose such non-torturous methods covered in the Patriot Act - if you grant them that all interrogations that the radical Muslim does not willingly sit through and has no right to the "5th" - are torture.

So it is not hard to see the truly weak are those that have made "civil liberties for terrorists" and proposing giving unlawful combatants every break they can think of.

Why? Mainly because they hate America. And Bush, they hate him even more.

What the radical Islamists do is liberating deconstructionalism, they believe. Terrorists are their allies in tearing down the rotten structures of the West, and many of these weak Leftists have reacted with glee at successful terrorist attacks and the countdown to their magic 2,000 American troops dead as if it was some huge Christmas present they were getting.

Any incident involving US troops, the Left happily puts in the worst possible terms for America, giving the Jihadis the benefit of the doubt and presuming evil instead on American troops and the American Administration and culture.

You know, I just realized I really, really dislike conservative talk radio and the FOXnews mindset, as there are way too many people stuck in that unreal world of constant manipulation and skewed bias. Bunch of lemmings who love hearing themselves say the same thing over and over again.
The reason I bring this up in this debate is because you conservative types can't seem to ever concentrate on the arguments at hand. Everything turns into liberal vs. conservatives, another imagined battle in the non-existant culture wars.
We are arguing pro-torture vs. anti-torture here, not liberal vs. conservative. Everybody that opposes your view is NOT, I repeat NOT, necessarily a liberal. I for one am a libertarian and a progressive, and I have no time for conservatism or liberalism, as they are both VERY OLD and REACTIONARY viewpoints that I personally have no need for, and think this country would be better off evolving past (The Reps and the Dems WILL go the way of the dinosaur one of these days).
What bothers me most as an independent voter is how CO-dependent these conservative types are on the liberals, and vice versa. You conservatives wouldn't know what to do if you didn't have your beloved liberals to complain about and attack. The ultimate hypocrisy is that you act as if the Democrats and Republicans HAVEN'T comfortably been sharing power together for nearly 150 years when in fact they HAVE and would in NO WAY jeopardize this grasp of power they both share. Those in power never risk that power, and, no matter what you say, you would not risk another political party coming along to replace or share power with the Democratic party; You would not exchange a known enemy for an unknown enemy, even if that unknown enemy WEREN'T liberal. So enough with this stupid farce of turning every argument into liberal vs. conservative... it's just a SHOW, much like that stupid talk radio is a SHOW, and FOXnews is a SHOW. Try having an original, REAL thought of your own one of these days. I'd love to hear a dialogue from somebody that isn't just the regurgitation of the usual conservative dribble I hear over and over again from various bores that ALL use the same arguments and accusations. And, by the way, stop saying every argument made against bad governmental policy is in fact Bush hatred in guise, especially when your defense of such policies is blind loyalty to Bush. I oppose ANY president, person, or politician that thinks torture is an acceptable American value. And I didn't need some obese, pill-popping radio host or blow-dried FOXnews blowhard to give me that view. You call yourself conservative? Conformist is a more accurate description...
Now that that's out of the way, Chris Ford is using specious reasoning to justify torture. He is making his argument step by step, taking logical leaps that aren't necessarily true, especially when he keeps implying torture and interrogation are the same thing. They are not: You can effectively interrogate without it having to lead to the point where it is abuse (i.e. torture). To suddenly adopt torture as acceptable is to let fear guide you rather than honor, to soil the prestige of our great country not unlike the horrible Abu Ghraib blight on our history that will never go away, Now, maybe 9/11 frightened you so much that you no longer care what it takes to protect you from the terrorists, but some of us in America aren't afraid of our enemy, and don't feel the desperate, hysteria-driven need to suddenly compromise our HIGH American values and adopt whatever cheap, dirty tactic it takes to fight this war on terror. We can beat them without lowering ourselves to amoral standards such as torture. The war on terror isn't some dirty infighting in the back of an alley where you have to do whatever it takes to win... it's a global conflict of ideas and forces that we can easily win by maintaining our high moral ground. I'm no military strategist, but the one thing I do know is that you don't give up your position if you have the higher ground. As an American, I emphatically denounce torture as an unnecessary and ignoble tool that debases our American values (such as no cruel and unusual punishment) needlessly. We can have our cake and eat it to. We can defeat our enemy on our own terms. To say otherwise is unpatriotic, to be guided by the fear of our foes rather than pride in ourselves, our standards, and our country's rich, torture-free history. Now there's some REAL conservatism for you, not that cookie cutter view so many follow these days.

Chris Ford, you wrote: "Why? Mainly because they hate America."

No. If we hated America, we'd be glad to see it sinking into such moral degradation. It's because we love it that we're so angry about what is happening. Who cares more about a kid becoming a drug-addict? A stranger? Or the kid's parents?

As Errin rightly says, 'liberal' v. 'conservative' is a red herring here. There's nothing especially 'conservative' about supporting torture. (Or if you think there is, please explain what it would be, and how it would be logically related to other 'conservative' principles.) What logical connection is there between thinking we should torture detainees and, say, wanting lower taxes, or a smaller role for government?

Much of this is really just partisanship, not principle. If a Democratic president were encouraging torture by US personnel as a matter of policy, then many Republicans who are now defending the practice would be complaining about the deep stain on our national honor, while some of the Democrats who are now complaining about the practice probably (sadly) would be making excuses for the practice. But don't confuse politics with principles. Plenty of self-described conservatives oppose torture by US personnel. Or are you going to say that there are only nine conservatives in the US Senate right now? (Cf. McCain amendment, passed 90-9).

Chris Ford has overlooked a number of things. First, the war on terrorism is not like other wars of the past. It is not against a nation-state; it is not a war in the conventional sense where enemies are identified as soldiers. But the President says that this is a "war" and that he is a "war time president." Assuming that it is a "war" (which it is not) one would think that those taken prisoners are "prisoners of war." If this is not a war then those taken into custody must be called "suspects." A suspect in a crime must is presumed innocent unless he is proved guilty. In the case of hundreds of detainees in Guantanamo Bay there has been no charge sheet at all. Those guys don't know why they are there in the first place. So the logical thing sould be to bring charges against them. Hear them out. If they are found guilty they must be punished. If they are found innocent then they must be released. But holding people for four or more years without bringing up charges against them is ABSURD. It is totally against all norms of decency and rule of law this nation has ever upheld.

The second issue is torture. It has been proven beyond doubt that confessions obtained from prisoners by torture is invariably useless.

Thirdly, the administration is trying to blame Congress for the Iraqui mess. Congress was asked to say yes to the president's decision already made. Basically the authorization to go to war was obtained under duress - "if you are not with us you are against us." This is tantamount to confession obtained under torture.

Congress was given only some of the documents. All doubtful material was withheld. So, for the administration to pretend that it would not have gone to war had not Congress pushed it sounds hollow. Consider the pressure put on the United Nations to back this war; Colin Powell being sent to the UN to present a deceitful case for non-existent WMD.

In short, there is no one to take responsibility for the actions taken and/or left untaken. Everybody is intent on passing the buck. But the buck must stop somewhere!

While the discussion here in America is focused on who is to blame for the rush to war and why torture is being practised against detainees here and abroad, much of the foreign press has been looking at the broader picture. Many seem to observe a pattern of disregard for civilized norms and conventions. Here is an analysis by a foreign reporter.
-------------
CONCERNED AT the environmental consequences of having dumped thousands of pounds of chemical weapons of various types into the ocean off its coast soon after World War II, the U.S. in the 1980s decided to prepare a master-list of all such dumps for future monitoring.

The report, authored by William R. Brankowitz of the Army Chemical Materials Agency, was titled "Summary of Some Chemical Munitions Sea Dumps by the United States" and was printed for internal circulation on January 30, 1989. Among the 50-plus incidents catalogued involving mustard gas, lewisite, and other nasty chemicals were the following two: Between September 14 and December 21, 1945, 924 canisters of White Phosphorous (WP) cluster bomb munitions from the Edgewood Arsenal in Maryland were loose-dumped in the Atlantic Ocean along with WP smoke canisters and smoke projectiles and arsenic trichloride; and then on June 18, 1962, 5,252 WP munitions were dumped in the Atlantic along with mustard projectiles, 20 drums of cyanide and 421,157 pounds of radiological waste. Another report prepared in March 2001 titled "Offshore disposal of chemical agents and weapons conducted by the United States" by the Historical Research and Response Team of the U.S. Army Research, Development and Engineering Command at the Aberdeen Proving Ground, corroborated the same information, including the dumping of WP.

These reports are significant because they tell us that as far as the U.S. military's own inventory of weapons was concerned, White Phosphorous was classified as a "chemical munition" or a "chemical agent and weapon" as recently as 1989 and 2001. And for good reason too. The WP had been dumped into the ocean in 1945 and 1962 but was obviously considered dangerous enough for the U.S. Army to be concerned about its toxicity five decades later.

So how come a weapon that is not considered kosher enough to dump in the ocean in 1945 is OK to dump on human beings in Fallujah, Iraq, some 60 years later? And even if the Pentagon believes it's OK, how come it can get away with now saying WP is not a chemical weapon?

For a war launched by the United States in the name of dealing with the threat posed by weapons of mass destruction, the allegation of chemical weapon use levelled by Italy's RAI television channel last week was undoubtedly as incendiary as the munitions in question. Quoting former U.S. Army personnel involved in the massive, no-holds-barred military assault on the Iraqi city of Fallujah last November, a documentary produced by Sigfrido Ranucci and Maurizio Torrealta charged the U.S. with the indiscriminate use of White Phosphorous munitions and showed graphic and shocking visual evidence of the effect this weapon produced on its human victims, many of whom were civilian. According to the military affairs website, globalsecurity.org, WP "results in painful chemical burn injuries. The resultant burn typically appears as a necrotic area with a yellowish color and characteristic garlic-like odor. White phosphorus is highly lipid soluble and as such, is believed to have rapid dermal penetration once particles are embedded under the skin." Basically, the chemical burns the human body but can leave the clothes covering it intact. This is exactly what the Italian documentary showed.

In the documentary, Maurizio Torrealta asked Peter Kaiser, spokespersom of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, whether White Phosphorous was a prohibited substance. "No, white phosphorous is not prohibited by the Convention on chemical weapons in the context of war operations, provided that use is not made of that substance for its toxic properties. For example, white phosphorous is normally used to produce smoke bombs that hide troop movements, and this is considered a legitimate use with respect to the conventions. But if the toxic or caustic properties of White Phosphorous are used as a weapon, then it is prohibited."

I did a Google News search of how the U.S. media was reporting the allegation and discovered that apart from the Boston Globe and Christian Science Monitor, virtually no "mainstream" American newspaper had bothered to cover the story. A few ran denials by the Pentagon that the U.S. had used illegal weapons but most chose to ignore the issue altogether. To the best of my knowledge, not even the Daily Press of Newport, Virginia -- whose probe into the presence of deadly White Phosphorous landmines in Chesapeake Bay led to the two Army reports mentioned above being declassified last month -- reported the Fallujah allegations let alone the coincidence of WP being involved.

One of the collateral benefits of defeating a country in war is that victory brings with it not just Victor's Justice but Victor's Book-keeping as well. Thanks to Paul Volcker and the CIA-run Iraq Survey Group of Charles Duelfer -- which preceded him and couldn't find WMDs and so decided to find a corruption scam -- we now know the fate of virtually every farthing paid into and out of the Iraqi oil-for-food accounts. What we don't know is how many Iraqi civilians have been killed in U.S. offensive operations -- "We don't do body counts," General Tommy Franks had famously said -- or how they died and are still dying. After Nuremberg, all aggressors have realised the value of sloppy record-keeping.

When the allegation of chemical weapon use in Fallujah first surfaced last December, the U.S. State Department swung into action to deny the charge. On December 9, 2004, its International Information Programs posted a response on its website under the section "Identifying Misinformation": "[S]ome news accounts have claimed that U.S. forces have used `outlawed' phosphorus shells in Fallujah. Phosphorus shells are not outlawed. U.S. forces have used them very sparingly in Fallujah, for illumination purposes. They were fired into the air to illuminate enemy positions at night, not at enemy fighters."

The State Department's response was carefully formulated because the Chemical Weapons Convention -- to which the U.S. is a signatory -- does not outlaw the use of WP if the purpose is to use the smoke the munition generates to mark a target or obscure ground movement or even as an incendiary against material facilities. But using it as a weapon to directly attack human beings is generally considered illegal since the CWC bans the use of "any chemical which through its chemical action on life processes can cause death, temporary incapacitation or permanent harm to humans or animals." Thus, the ST100-3 Battle Book published by the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth in July 1999, notes in chapter 5: "Burster Type White phosphorus (WP M110A2) rounds burn with intense heat and emit dense white smoke. They may be used as the initial rounds in the smokescreen to rapidly create smoke or against material targets, such as Class V sites or logistic sites. It is against the law of land warfare to employ WP against personnel targets." (emphasis added)

Accordingly, on the day the Italian documentary was to be telecast, Lt. Col. Steve Boylan, spokesperson of U.S. military in Iraq, admitted the use of WP in Fallujah as a battlefield prop but told Amy Goodman on National Public Radio: "I know of no cases where people were deliberately targeted by the use of white phosphorus."

Unfortunately for the State Department and Lt. Col. Boylan, an in-house Army magazine, Field Artillery, had already published a breathless and rather candid account of the utility of deliberately targeting people with WP by three soldiers who had taken part in Operation Phantom Fury. "White Phosphorous proved to be an effective and versatile munition. We used it for screening missions at two breeches and, later in the fight, as a potent psychological weapon against the insurgents in trench lines and spider holes when we could not get effects on them with HE (high explosives). We fired "shake and bake" missions at the insurgents, using WP to flush them out and HE to take them out."

In the course of two years, the world has borne witness to the ease with which the United States has broken one civilised norm after the next. First out was the taboo against indefinite detention, then the one on torture and collective punishment, then the ban on the use of disproportionate force and the use of indiscriminate weapons in closely confined areas where non-combatants could be targeted. In Fallujah, that martyred city which will now take its place in the annals of human infamy alongside Guernica, the U.S. appears to have crossed yet another frontier. And there is no Paul Volcker to catalogue the crime.

Ah, jeez. 'The Left! The Left! The Left!', like some deranged reactionary parrot with brain damage. At least Chris numbered his points so they can easily be rebutted. Still too stuck in his imaginary culture wars to actually focus on what our argument is, which is an America that tortures versus an America that considers itself above torture. Not liberal vs conservative, not bleeding heart vs hardliner, not pro-Bush vs anti-Bush. Torture is the topic, plain and simple. Now to respond to his points:
1) Execution is not torture. I would support execution of unlawful combatants as long as it is accompanied by due process of law (being killed in battle or self defense is seperate from execution; And, sorry, no stretching self defense into pre-emptive action)
2 ) Interrogation's fine; Torture is unacceptable. While I argue that torture is simply immoral and un-American, others more qualified (like John McCain, torture victim and patriot) argue that torture is ineffective and counterproductive. I have tremendous faith in our armed forces and intelligence agencies that they are skilled enough in what they do to get results without degrading their honor and ours by resorting to torture.
3) I never said it was the mark of a coward to enact just punishment against those that engage in unlawful warfare. I said it was the mark of a coward to resort to torture, which is cruel and unusual punishment, against unlawful combatants, or anybody, for that matter. But I don't believe we're debating torture as punishment. We are debating torture as an acceptable American practice, not as a form of punishment. I would suggest somebody read my definition of a coward in my original post rather than your misrepresentation of my view.
4) Rwanda? You're going way off topic here, and are starting to use some very artistic license with my comments on what marks a coward. I feel we should have intervened in Rwanda, but if we did so, we'd do it along a Constitutional process. And even then, torture would not have been part of our hypothetical Rwanda intervention.
5) I'm a little speechless by this one. After making various arguments on how unlawful combatants deserve punishment for unfairly fighting in war, you suddenly shift gears and say that, as a soldier yourself, you don't want to be hampered by fairness and lawfulness set upon you in battle. I mean come on... is this John Kerry I'm debating with? 'Cause you just pulled a doozy of a flip flop. I may not be a member of the military, but at least I'm not a hypocrite. Are you or are you not going to be a 'lawful combatant'? If you are, then you have rules you have to follow, rules that I feel as an American include no torture (as in the Constitution does not allow it or any other form of cruel or unusual punishment). If you're not, then you are no better than Osama Bin Laden and his ilk. But, being in the military, you have no choice: You will be a lawful combatant, and you will uphold the standards and values of the United States of America that you are sworn to protect and serve. You shouldn't be hampered on the battlefield, but you shouldn't be given a blank check to do whatever you want to wage an 'unfair' fight. I may not be your commanding officer, but I am an American citizen, and you in the military represent me and my country. You can't just do whatever the hell you please, because I will have to pay for any heinous acts performed by you. It's hard for me to support the troops when they do crap like Abu Ghraib and make me and my beloved country look bad in the eyes of the world and ourselves. Standards like no torture are made and upheld for a reason, and aren't to be abandoned willy nilly depending on the current situation. My life and my country are no game either, not that I ever suggested anything that had to do with this torture argument was in anyway a game.
6) Intelligence and interrogation are all the tools we need to find Jihadists in our midst. We don't need to take interrogation to the extreme of torture. The Patriot Act has nothing to do with torture. I oppose both, but there's simply nothing in the Patriot Act that allows torture, so it is irrelevent to this argument, much like your 'the left is the problem' argument you end your post with.
The Jihadists are the Jihadists, and the Lefties are the Lefties. For you to come off as though a Jihadist and a Leftist were one and the same thing, both on the same side, just denotes further the irreperable brain damage and delusions that can occur from constantly listening to too much conservative talk radio and FOXnews programs. You are so wrapped up in this propogandist script you've been playing along with and buying into for who knows how many years that you aren't really much of an effective debater. Try and see if you can make a post without having to going on a 'Lefties' rant or a Clinton-bashing sidetrack for once.

"Only one person manipulated evidence and misled the world - and that person was Saddam Hussein." - Bush.

This is a strange twist to the current debate which shows that an overwhelming majority of Americans believe that the administration misled the nation on the motive for the Iraqi war.

Saddam is under trial and we hope that his atrocities will be brought to light in the court of law pretty soon.

But the current debate is not about the Iraqi dictator, rather it is about why we invaded Iraq.

Assuming that Saddam "misled" people about WMD were we misled by his misleading? But did he not say that UN weapons inspectors were welcome to do their job? Did not UN ask for some more time to complete the inspection?

So, we were misled by Saddam? He lied to us about the "absence" of WMD? Or, did he say that he possessed WMD (and we believed him) and then later (after a brutal war and thousands of lives lost)we found out that he did not possess them? Or, the other way around, did he say he did not possess WMD and (again, after a brutal war that has claimed the lives of more than 2000 of our men/women in uniform) we found out that he did not lie but told the truth after all?

So, how did Saddam mislead us about the motive for this war of choice?

Where is the misleading?

ChrisF.S.--- on the question of who misled whom here's a detailed analysis that appears in The Christian Science Monitor - Nov. 15, 2005.

YELLOWCAKE TO PLAMEGATE'-

HOW MISHANDLED INTELLIGENCE IN THE RUN-UP TO THE IRAQ WAR LED TO AN INDICTMENT IN THE WHITE HOUSE

By Peter Grier | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

WASHINGTON - The first time the State Department intelligence analyst saw the documents he thought there was something weird about them.

The ones dealing with a purported uranium deal between Niger and Saddam Hussein's Iraq bore a validation stamp that seemed a bit funky, for one thing. And that companion paper! It outlined some kind of bizarre military campaign against world powers. Iraq and Iran were supposedly in it together - preposterous, given their enmity - and the whole thing was being run out of the Nigerien Embassy in Rome.

"Completely implausible," the analyst later recounted for investigators.

Because the documents had come from the same source, and were similar in appearance, they were probably all suspect. Maybe now the CIA and the rest of the US intelligence community would believe what the State Department had said for months: These allegations from a foreign intelligence service that Hussein was hunting for "yellowcake" - a uranium concentrate - in Africa were unlikely to be true.

But the CIA didn't look at the documents. A little over three months later President Bush, in his 2003 State of the Union speech, said 16 fateful words: "... the British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

This is the story of how those words came to be, and how their effect rippled through the years, ultimately resulting in the criminal indictment of a high administration official, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby. Culled primarily from US government reports and congressional testimony, it deals with nuclear materials, foreign spies, and a secret trip to the finest refueling stop in Africa. It centers on a peculiar set of documents - provenance as yet unknown - that a presidential inquiry three years later found to be "transparently forged."

Much about the affair remains to be discovered. But one thing now seems clear: If US intelligence agencies had spent more time studying the evidence in their possession, the president might never had said those words. Scooter Libby probably would be in his White House office today.

The intelligence community's "failure to undertake a real review of the documents - even though their validity was the subject of serious doubts - was a major failure of the intelligence system," the presidentially appointed Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States concluded last March.

* * *

In its natural state uranium occurs in tiny concentrations. Thus, the first stop for crushed rock from many uranium mines is a mill, where it is bathed in sulfuric acid, dried, and filtered. The result is a coarse uranium oxide power that is often yellow in color. That's where it gets its nickname, "yellowcake."

Yellowcake is itself a raw material. Enriched, it can serve as the beating heart of a nuclear power plant. Enriched to a higher level, it can serve as the fissile core of a nuclear bomb. For that reason, the destinations of yellowcake shipments are of interest to intelligence officials around the world.

Sometime in October 2001, a foreign government told US intelligence it had information indicating that Niger was planning to ship several tons of yellowcake to Iraq. (This government goes unnamed in official US accounts, but it is widely reported in the media to have been Italy.)

Several things about this allegation made sense. Along with Canada and Australia, Niger is one of the globe's largest producers of uranium. And Hussein knew all about yellowcake. He already had 550 tons, subject to International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspections.

Still, US analysts were unimpressed. The report lacked detail. The US Embassy in Niger checked with the head of the French-led consortium that ran Niger's mines. According to an embassy cable, the reply was indignant: There was "no possibility" of such a diversion.

In February 2002, US intelligence received a second foreign government tip - from a country unnamed by unclassified US material. This contained more information, including an alleged verbatim text of the Niger-Iraq accord.

The State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), its in-house intelligence-analysis agency, thought the whole thing baloney, since any nation that tried to transfer such a large quantity of a suspicious material was likely to be caught.

But the rest of US intelligence was taking notice. The source of this information was credible, claimed the CIA's intelligence-gathering directorate. So on Feb. 12, the Defense Intelligence Agency issued a finished intelligence product on the topic.

"Iraq probably is searching abroad for natural uranium to assist in its nuclear weapons program," concluded the DIA analysis.

It was at this point that the matter of Niger, Iraq, and yellowcake rocketed from intelligence ephemera to prime policy concern. The reason? Dick Cheney.

* * *

Vice President Cheney read the DIA product on the day it was produced, according to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, which investigated prewar intelligence and reported on it in July 2004. That day he asked his intelligence community briefer what the CIA thought about the Niger issue.

The result was a very unbureaucratic scurry of activity.

First, the CIA fired back an assessment that in so many words said, "We're working on it." It promised to see if the information could be corroborated.

Second, CIA experts began to confer as to how this corroboration could be done. Who could make discreet inquiries in the region? One Counterproliferation Division expert offered up a name: ex-Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who happened to be her husband.

The subsequent exposure of that expert - the clandestine operative Valerie Plame - led to the naming of special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald to investigate the leak. In turn, that led to the indictment of Mr. Libby, the vice president's chief of staff, on charges of false statements, perjury, and obstruction of justice.

But that was all in the future that February day. Ms. Plame was just someone talking up her husband's credentials - he "has good relations with both the PM [prime minister] and the former Minister of Mines," stated her memo to superiors.

She was blunter with her husband. She told congressional investigators that when she approached him on behalf of the CIA she said, "there's this crazy report" about Niger selling uranium to Iraq. Could he go to Niger and check out the deal?

* * *

Niger is not the center of the universe. Barbro Owens-Kirkpatrick realized that when she arrived there to take up the post of US ambassador in the fall of 1999.

One of the only ways she could lure top US officials for a visit was to encourage them to stop for refueling if they were overflying the region.

"I worked very hard to make Niger the best refueling stop in Africa," Ambassador Owens-Kirkpatrick told congressional investigators.

On Feb. 24, 2002, she snagged a big one: Marine Gen. Carlton Fulford, then deputy commander of US European Command. She decided to use his visit to raise the uranium issue with Nigerien officials. At her urging, General Fulford asked Niger's President Mamadou Tandja about it. President Tandja assured him that Niger's goal was to keep its uranium in "safe hands."

Two days later, Mr. Wilson landed on Owens-Kirkpatrick's doorstep. She'd already raised the issue with Niger's leaders, so she asked her CIA-dispatched visitor to limit his meetings to ex-officials and business contacts.

Wilson agreed. Among the people he met was former Nigerien Prime Minister Ibrahim Mayaki, who said he was unaware of any yellowcake contracts with rogue states - and that if any existed, he would know. Mr. Mayaki also mentioned that in 1999, when he was still in power, he'd met with an Iraqi delegation to discuss expanding commercial relations. He interpreted this to mean that the Iraqis were interested in yellowcake - it was Niger's biggest export, after all. But he told Wilson he'd steered the conversation to other topics, and then let the matter drop.

Before he left, Wilson told Owens- Kirkpatrick that as far as he was concerned it appeared highly unlikely anything was going on. Back home, he told CIA debriefers the same thing. He figured this information would be distributed to the White House, and Vice President Cheney, directly. Instead, the CIA produced no paper in response to his trip, and gave his effort a middling grade of "good."

It was not surprising that Nigeriens would play down reports of a yellowcake sale, analysts felt. One CIA officer believed Wilson's trip actually provided some confirmation of what the foreign tips were saying. Former Prime Minister Mayaki had acknowledged meeting with an Iraqi delegation, after all.

In the end, the US intelligence community had a fairly consistent response to ex-ambassador Wilson's dip into intelligence-gathering. "No one believed it added a great deal of new information to the Iraq-Niger uranium story," stated the report of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

* * *

About one month after Wilson's trip, the CIA's intelligence-gathering arm received a third tip from a foreign government - again unnamed in unclassified US papers - that Niger and Iraq were working a yellowcake deal.

This report had yet more detail. The CIA's Iraq nuclear analyst (who is unnamed in government reports, as are most US intelligence analysts involved in this matter) saw nothing obviously suspicious about it. True, it contained one glaring mistake, but at the time it didn't seem like a big deal. The report placed July 7, 2000, on a Wednesday. That day was actually a Friday.

The relevant folks in Foggy Bottom remained unimpressed. Over at the State Department's INR, the Iraq nuclear analyst continued to argue that the whole thing didn't make sense. The substantial amounts allegedly involved amounted to a large percentage of Niger's yellowcake production. France controlled the mines - and anyway, one of the mines was flooded.

The CIA analyst stuck to his position. Niger wasn't the only place Hussein was supposedly shopping for uranium, he noted. Separate intelligence reports said Iraqi officials had been looking for yellowcake in Somalia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

In the end the CIA and State counterparts "agreed to disagree," according to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

Meanwhile, it was becoming clear to many in Washington that a US-led war to oust Hussein was possible, even likely, in the near future. By late summer 2002, key senators were beginning to complain that they would soon have to vote on a resolution on use of force in Iraq without a comprehensive US intelligence community estimate of the state of Hussein's weapons of mass destruction.

So US intelligence began compiling one. On Sept. 25, the CIA hosted a big interagency meeting to discuss a draft of this National Intelligence Estimate. The uranium section was straightforward, repeating that a foreign government passed along reports of Hussein's interest in yellowcake.

The only analyst present who voiced disagreement was the one from State's INR, which serves as the department's in-house intelligence-analyzing agency.

The uranium text stayed in. But it wasn't included in the "key judgments" section. The consensus in the room held that Iraq's efforts to get more yellowcake weren't crucial to the argument that he was rebuilding his nuclear-weapons program.

"We'll leave it in the paper for completeness. Nobody can say we didn't connect the dots," said the person in charge of the paper, the national intelligence officer for strategic and nuclear programs.

INR added a footnote that it found the uranium claim "highly dubious." But in the finished product, that dissent was all but lost. It was separated from the section on the alleged uranium deal by 60 pages.

Meanwhile, the British government made public its own official conclusions on the Niger subject, on Sept. 24, 2002. In response to unrest in Britain about the possibility of war, it issued a white paper on Iraq's WMD programs that, among other things, stated "there is intelligence that Iraq has sought the supply of significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

* * *

The story of the documents may begin in Italy, in 1991.

That year - the year the first President Bush launched the first US war against Iraq - someone broke into the Nigerien Embassy in Rome. Reportedly, nothing was taken except paper - official letterhead of the Republic of Niger.

Eleven years later, on Oct. 9, 2002, an Italian journalist named Elisabetta Burba contacted the US Embassy in Rome. Ms. Burba worked for the magazine Panorama, part of the media empire of Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, and she had a question: Could the US authenticate some interesting documents that had come into her possession?

The papers depicted some sort of contract for uranium between Niger and Iraq. The source, who had provided them to Panorama, wanted 15,000 euros in return for publication, said Burba. Her bosses wouldn't pay that kind of money unless they were sure they weren't being misled.

That was what she told US diplomats in Italy, anyway. The diplomats were glad to oblige.

On Oct. 15 the embassy in Rome faxed the papers to the State Department's Bureau of Nonproliferation in Washington. That same day the bureau passed copies to State's INR.

This is the point when INR's nuclear analyst figured something was really wrong. That paper alleging a military campaign against world powers - it seemed ridiculous. And it had the same authentication stamp as the ones dealing with uranium.

At an interagency meeting the next day, intel analysts from the DIA, the Department of Energy, and the National Security Agency all snapped up copies of the documents. Four CIA employees attended that meeting. None remembers taking the Niger papers, although a postmortem search turned up copies in a CIA vault.

At that point the alleged uranium deal just wasn't a significant part of the CIA's argument that Hussein was rebuilding his nuclear program, the analysts later said. "Getting the documents was not a priority," one told Senate investigators.

Within months, that would change.

For one thing, the IAEA became interested in the alleged Niger-Iraq yellowcake deal. On Jan. 6, 2003, an IAEA official asked the US for any information it had backing up the claim.

And the INR analyst kept at it. On Jan. 13, he sent an e-mail to colleagues outlining his reasoning why the purchase agreement "probably is a hoax."

Reading this e-mail, the CIA's Iraq nuclear analyst realized he didn't have the supposedly ridiculous documents the missive discussed. He asked for copies.

The CIA finally received copies of the original foreign language documents detailing the supposed Niger-Iraq contract on Jan. 16, 2003.

* * *

On Jan. 27, 2003, at a National Security Council meeting at the White House, someone handed George Tenet a paper copy of Bush's State of the Union address, to be delivered the next evening.

Then director of Central Intelligence, Mr. Tenet was a busy man, and he dealt with this document in the manner of busy people everywhere. He didn't read it, he testified later.

Instead, he handed it to an executive assistant, who presumably wasn't supposed to read it, to give to a top official in the CIA's intelligence directorate, who was. That official, being as busy as his boss, didn't read it either.

Thus nobody at the CIA's top levels saw that the president's signature speech of the year contained an assertion, sourced to British intelligence, that Hussein was seeking uranium oxide from Africa.

Three months earlier, Tenet had called the White House and insisted that similar words be excised from another speech.

But on Jan. 28, Tenet could only stand by while the president repeated the allegations for a TV audience of tens of millions.

"The Director of Central Intelligence should have taken the time to read the State of the Union speech and fact-check it himself," later concluded the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

Of course, the White House had been trying for some time to get CIA clearance for the president to publicly mention this allegation. Truth be told, the CIA had been sending back a message that was mixed.

Mid-level CIA analysts had no problem with Bush mentioning yellowcake. Throughout the fall of 2002, when the NSC would send over proposed presidential language on the subject, they would merely edit it, making minimal changes such as inserting "up to" before a reference to "500 metric tons."

But Bush had never publicly brought up the subject. By October, CIA higher-ups seemed chary.

On Oct. 6, 2002, the NSC sent over the sixth draft of a big speech the president was to give in Cincinnati. It contained a reference to Iraq "having been caught attempting to purchase up to 500 metric tons of uranium oxide."

Tenet and other top CIA officials told the White House to take it out. Reporting on this was weak, Tenet said. Bush should not be a "fact witness" on the issue. On Oct. 7, he delivered the speech in Cincinnati, without any uranium reference.

Down in the CIA's ranks, some continued to believe that Iraq and Niger were probably working a deal, they later testified. They believed that right up to the moment when the primary evidence for it was exposed as a fraud.

* * *

At some point in the process of drafting the State of the Union speech in 2003, White House officials decided that the speech's assertions about Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction would look better if they were sourced.

Discussions with mid-level CIA officials led speechwriters to believe that the reference to yellowcake was sensitive, and that the agency preferred it to be laid on the British, who had mentioned it publicly in the fall of 2002.

Stephen Hadley, then deputy national security adviser, said at the time that the White House was not aware of any question about the solidity of British sourcing. But Mr. Hadley had been involved in the decision to strike a reference to Hussein's interest in uranium from a Bush's Cincinnati speech in October 2002. "I should have recalled at the time ... that there was controversy associated with the uranium issue," said Hadley in 2003.

* * *

On Feb. 4, 2003 - a week after the State of the Union speech - the US finally sent electronic copies of the Niger documents to IAEA offices in Vienna. Jacques Bute, then head of IAEA's Iraq Nuclear Verification Office, was in New York that day, and the US sent him copies as well.

On March 3, the IAEA told the US Mission in Vienna its conclusion: The documents were obvious fakes.

The little mistakes were telling. The papers referred to a Nigerien Constitution of 1965, which had been passed in 1999. The foreign minister who purportedly signed the papers was not in office at the time. The letterhead was obsolete, years old; and references to various Nigerien state agencies were riddled with errors.

"We have therefore concluded that these specific allegations are unfounded," IAEA Director Mohamed ElBaradei told the UN Security Council on March 7.

US intelligence began backpedaling with alacrity. Within weeks an internal intelligence community memo concluded the yellowcake deal was "unlikely." On June 17, 2003, a CIA memo for the Director of Central Intelligence said, "we no longer believe that there is sufficient other reporting to conclude that Iraq pursued uranium from abroad."

Then, on July 6, Wilson wrote his now-famous op-ed for The New York Times, "What I Didn't Find in Africa," which outlined why he had never believed the Niger story. Wilson also appeared on "Meet the Press." The Washington Post published a story on the Niger subject based in part on a Wilson interview.

On July 7, Scooter Libby had lunch with White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer, according to court papers. This guy Wilson's wife worked at the CIA, Libby is said to have told Mr. Fleischer. That information wasn't widely known.

Soon, it would be.

* * *

The question of who forged the Niger documents remains open. The FBI this month closed a two-year investigation of the subject, saying only that agents believe the whole scheme was "for financial gain."

News reports have focused on Italy - and specifically on Italian intelligence. The Italian newspaper La Repubblica has published a series alleging that Italian intelligence passed the documents to Washington and London knowing they were fake. Italian intelligence chief Nicolo Pollari denied this charge in a closed-door briefing for Italian lawmakers this month.

Britain has not retracted its claim of the Iraq-Niger connection, saying it has other evidence confirming the deal.

The US now believes all the evidence it has seen, including the multiple foreign government reports, came from one source: the tainted papers.

"The CIA concluded the original reporting was based on the forged documents and was thus itself unreliable," says the report of the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States.

Who knew what when? A chronology.
2001

Oct. 15 CIA issues an intelligence report on a possible sale of yellowcake uranium from Niger to Iraq. Source of the tip is a foreign government, later identified in news reports as Italy.

2002

Feb. 5: CIA's second intelligence report, again citing a foreign government service, includes more detail about alleged yellowcake deal. It includes what is said to be "verbatim text" of the accord.

Feb. 12: Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) writes an intelligence product titled "Niamey [Niger's capital] signed an agreement to sell 500 tons of uranium a year to Baghdad." Its basis: CIA's previous reports.

Vice President Dick Cheney reads the DIA report and asks his CIA intelligence briefer for more information.

CIA, scrambling to learn more, taps former Ambassador Joseph Wilson to travel to Niger. He is suggested for the trip by his wife, Valerie Plame, a clandestine CIA employee.

Feb. 24: Nigerien President Mamadou Tandja assures a US visitor that his country's uranium is "in safe hands."

Feb. 26: Wilson arrives in Niger.

March 1: State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research publishes an assessment titled "Niger Sale of Uranium to Iraq is Unlikely."

March 5: Two CIA officers debrief Wilson at his home upon his return.

March 8: CIA report on Wilson's trip rates his information as "good," meaning it adds to the US intelligence community's knowledge of an issue. It judges the trip's most important information to be a former Nigerien official's admission that he met an Iraqi delegation in 1999.

Sept. 11: National Security Council (NSC) staff contact the CIA to clear language about Iraq's alleged attempts to obtain yellowcake, for use in a presidential statement. CIA suggests adding "up to" before "500 metric tons." Statement is never used.

Sept. 24: British government publishes a "White Paper on Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction," which states "there is intelligence that Iraq has sought the supply of significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

NSC staff contacts the CIA to clear another statement for the president. CIA suggests the phrase "of the process to enrich uranium" be changed to "in the process to enrich uranium." Statement is never used.

Oct. 1: US National Intelligence Council publishes a comprehensive National Intelligence Estimate, "Iraq's Continuing Programs for Weapons of Mass Destruction." It repeats allegations about Iraq, Niger, and yellowcake but notes that US intelligence has not confirmed foreign government reports.

Oct. 2: CIA deputy director testifies before Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Of reports of Iraq's interest in Niger and yellowcake, he says: "We don't think they are very credible."

Oct. 4: NSC sends CIA a draft of a speech President Bush is scheduled to give in Cincinnati. It contains a reference to the possible yellowcake deal. CIA Director George Tenet ultimately calls the White House to get it removed.

Oct. 9: An Italian journalist provides the US Embassy in Rome with documents that purport to detail the Niger-Iraq yellowcake dealings.

Oct. 15: Documents are faxed to State Department in Washington.

Dec. 19: On its website, the State Department posts a response to an Iraqi declaration to the UN. Iraq's declaration "ignores efforts to procure uranium from Niger," says the response. This is later changed to "... uranium from abroad."

2003

Jan. 13: Iraq nuclear analyst at State's Bureau of Intelligence and Research circulates an e-mail to counterparts in the intelligence community denouncing Niger documents as "clearly a forgery."

Jan. 16: CIA receives foreign-language originals of the Niger documents.

Jan. 26: Secretary of State Colin Powell addresses the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. "Why is Iraq still trying to procure uranium?" he asks.

Jan. 28: In his State of the Union address Bush says, "[T]he British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

Feb. 4: US government provides copies of the Niger documents to the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

Feb. 5: Powell briefs UN on alleged Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. His speech includes no reference to Niger or yellowcake purchases.

March 3: IAEA informs the US that it believes the Niger papers to be forged.

March 11: CIA circulates a limited-distribution assessment that does not dispute IAEA's findings.

March 19: US airstrikes against Iraq begin.

May 29: On or about this date, I. Lewis Libby, Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, asks an undersecretary of State for information about Wilson's trip to Niger, according to prosecutors. Libby is given a series of oral reports.

June 11: On or about this date, a State Department official tells Libby that Wilson's wife works at the CIA, and that State Department officials are saying she had a hand in his selection for the trip.

June 12: The Washington Post publishes a story about Wilson's trip to Niger that questions the accuracy of Bush's State of the Union assertion about Niger.

June 17:: A CIA memorandum finds there is not sufficient evidence to conclude that Iraq has been pursuing uranium from abroad.

July 6: Wilson's op-ed, "What I Didn't Find in Africa," appears in The New York Times.

July 8: Libby meets with then-New York Times reporter Judith Miller and discusses Wilson's trip. Among other things, Libby advises Miller that Wilson's wife is a CIA employee, according to prosecutors. He has subsequent discussions with NBC News Washington bureau chief Tim Russert and Time magazine reporter Matt Cooper.

2004

March 4: On or about this date, Libby, under oath, is said to tell a federal grand jury that Tim Russert told him that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA, and that when he heard it he was "taken aback."

2005

Oct. 28: Special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald announces that Libby has been indicted by a federal grand jury for making false statements, perjury, and obstruction of justice.

Frank S. - "Assuming that it is a "war" (which it is not) one would think that those taken prisoners are "prisoners of war." If this is not a war then those taken into custody must be called "suspects".

No, you set up a false dichotomy in arguing anyone in custody must either be a legitimate protected POW or a criminal suspect. You make that argument in ignorance of the rules of war as specified by the Hague and Geneva Conventions.

An unlawful combatant, such as a terrorist, is a separate beast. They are not automatically criminals, many being brave men dedicated to advancing their ideology or cause above all wartime laws & restrictions - willing to take risks and forgoe protections other soldiers have if captured as long as they can have the stealth to get into the heart of the enemy and strike.

You may wish to Google on Ex Parte Quirin sometime and review the unanimous Supreme Court decision that led to a rapid 2 month trial, appeal, & execution of 6 of 8 Nazi terrorists delivered by submarine, including one American citizen.

Frank S again - "But holding people for four or more years without bringing up charges against them is ABSURD. It is totally against all norms of decency and rule of law this nation has ever upheld."

Utter crap, Frank S. We held 750,000 Nazi POWs without charges for as long a period of time, NVA POWs for a longer period.

Frank S yet again - The second issue is torture. It has been proven beyond doubt that confessions obtained from prisoners by torture is invariably useless.

Frank does not appear to have read how Khalif Sheik Mohammed, the 9/11 mastermind's interrogation by the CIA which included the "toooooooortuuuuuuure" of waterboarding and sleep deprivation forced out details of 3 follow-on Al Qaeda unlawful combatant Ops, one of which by being thwarted saved the lives of thousands of Americans and Singaporese, according to the Singapore Gov't.

Frank S just indulges in blind pap. Blanket "feel-good" statements various ideologues make like "the forces of good always win in war because they are morally superior to an evil foe", "The Marxist dialectic always points the proper path to progress and triumph over reactionary elements", "The Jews are at fault", "torture never works because prisoners are always smarter than their captors" - all may feel good to the ideologue saying them, but none are generally true.

Frank S one more time - "Thirdly, the administration is trying to blame Congress for the Iraqui mess. Congress was asked to say yes to the president's decision already made. Basically the authorization to go to war was obtained under duress - "if you are not with us you are against us." This is tantamount to confession obtained under torture."

Ah, yes, Frank! Congress is not responsible because Bush "toooooortuuuuured" Congress into voting the war. That's a good one! Without even putting panties on the two-faced POS Kerry's head!

Errin talks about how to interrogate effectively without getting into torture, but of course does not deign to define what the boundaries are. Panties on JohnKerry's head to force his vote to use force on Iraq? Her point that interrogation is not torture is something I agree with, but I am pretty sure our boundary lines are quite different. Not surprising, because many define interrogation as optional based on the "feelings" of the innocent accused unlawful combatant who has yet to receive his team of ACLU lawyers....

As for her claim that it is wrong to point out liberals who hate America are against all means of rooting out the radical Muslim enemy - interrogations, wiretaps, records raids, library and flight school records without alerting the terror cell they are under scrutiny - anything under the Patriot Act as an alternative to interrogation....Well, the center of opposition is indeed the "usual suspects" on the Democratic Left.

Beren echoes Errin that all who voted with the Manchurian Candidate 90-9 were not quasi-traitors like Boxer, Durbin, or Kennedy. Or pure slease political opportunists like Schumer and Kerry. Sadly, Bush has long deserved such a slapdown for his arrogance, poor communications skills, and unwillingness to work with Congress. This was more about John Warner and other centrist Republicans wanting to stick it up Bush's ass than anything else.

The "libertarians" mentioned are peripheral. They are about as important as Vegans in terms of following or power.

Earlier, Errin proudly stated that the right to freedom is natural and inalienable, thus not dependent on soldiers sacrifice. I find that most naive. In our history, we have seen 24 million men give up their freedom and be involuntarily drafted to sacrifice through duty to protect that scrap of paper, the Constitution, and give it additional true meaning and force. Another 30 million were volunteer military. Those men, and recently a small number of women, have surrendered "god-given liberty" in meeting the call for duty, when confronted by a foe. 1,400,000 have died in Americas wars or peacetime military training, plus some 3,300,000 non-fatal casualties. Roughly 1,000 soldiers paid in blood for each word in the Constitution...

Freedom is not free. It is not even constant as a given, as freedom must be compromised by forced Drafts and other war restrictions in times of great peril. That that has always been how it is - so liberty can be enjoyed unfettered in peacetime.

Errin -

You take some comments into the deepest recesses of your mind and scramble them around, such as my observation that the US does not want an even fight - into us wanting to fight with no heed to the rules of war.

Next you say you support execution and interrogation of unlawful comatants, but only so long as "no torture" is used. But you don't define torture. Instead, you waste your words by not defining what torture is vs. interrogation - but get off on a lengthly rant about FOX news, which wasn't offered in my area until 2002.

Like FOX is some key.

Lefties sure hate FOX!

"OK Mustafa! Choose. Errin wants to be nice and give you a bullet in the head. We want information, so we will torture you with panties on the head, sleep deprivation, and beer."

"I am a brave Jihadi, so I reject Errin's mercy. I courageously choose staying awake by dancing all night with your infidel slut soldier females, their used panties on my head, preferably black lace, and Heineken, chilled, if you have it, American pig!"

Amazing what the Jordanians did in just 2 hours to the Iraqi radical Sunni cow who tried blowing up a wedding party. Had her singing like the fat lady at the end of the opera, without a visible mark on her body. They must have been nice to her! I wonder if the Jordanians requested 6 Jewish lawyers from the ACLU to represent her and she talked from the sheer joy and gratitude for the Jordanian's gesture.

Christ F.S. ----

Your posting on "who misled us into war" is very interesting. But you must read E.J. Dionne Jr.'s Op-Ed column in Washington Post, November 15 "Another Set of Scare Tactics."

Anonymous (recent) writes, "Utter crap, Frank S. We held 750,000 Nazi POWs without charges for as long a period of time, NVA POWs for a longer period."

This isn't relevant to your argument. We held them as prisoners of war, with all the rules that a