Many levels:

Mental/physical pain explicitly for the purpose of causing such rxn, without any method of ceasing it. Not goal directed-just sadistic.

But-Mental/physical pain for a specific purpose to prevent pending crimes? It has its place.

a spontaneous example is a hostage situation-

the police can shoot a hostage taker, without him commiting the crime of murder. The police can’t wait for him to kill somebody, they must act spontaneously and with good judgement. The deciding factor-If I don’t shoot this guy in the head, or leg(causing death/pain equivalent to torture) innocents will suffer. I would call this ‘justifiable’ homocide.

Move away from the spontaneous event-a terrorist knows the location of other terrorists who will seek to kill innocents, just not today. If in some cases, murder/homocide is reasonable, then could there not be a case where torture is reasonable?

Yes, there were some real abuses by the CIA and other agencies that needed correction, and no, that wasn’t an exclusively Democratic concern. But the post-Watergate, post-Vietnam era could be characterized as a time when Congress, and particularly the congressional Democrats, were in the ascendancy and setting the agenda. In the case of the Intelligence Oversight hearings, that included some good intentions run amok.

My comments were addressed specifically to the issue of “humint”—human intelligence—where the new rules of engagement expressly forbade the use of distasteful but effective techniques like bribery and blackmail, or dealing with criminal elements. I don’t have specific cites, but over the years several former CIA agents have complained about how gravely that limits their ability to collect intelligence or conduct effective covert operations. I would argue that in this specific case, Congress imposed standards that gave Church and the other senators a sense of high morality, but at the expense of national security.

I think the comparison with Gitmo is legitimate, particularly in light of your comments. There might well be abuses that need to be corrected, but critics of the administration’s POW policy have fatally weakened their own case by the sweeping, absolutist character of their charges. I know that numbers of claimed POW deaths have included people killed while being taken prisoner, for instance. And many, probably most, critics have gotten equally worked up over the “Koran in the toilet” episode, or prisoners getting smeared with fake menstrual blood in the course of interrogation. Sorry, but that’s not torture. Of course, there were real instances of torture in Iraq. They occurred under the Baathists, and I won’t turn anyone’s stomach by going into detail, but the distinction between that and Lynndie England’s misdeeds seems pretty clear.

It’s hard to avoid the impression that many critics of Gitmo object to any form of coercion at all. Coercion may be distasteful, but it can serve worthwhile, even vital ends, saving the lives of both American troops and the far more numerous civilian victims of terrorist attacks. I would argue that putting the emotional well-being of the prisoners ahead of those goals is morally dubious.

Not again, it’s not disagreement that we’re talking about, but charges of DELIBERATE deception on the road to war…

This isn’t the only editorial I have seen, which is questioning the Bush lied mantra of the left…

If there is a US paper that is backing up the claims of the democratic party by calling Bush a liar, I haven’t seen it.

Bush is using the polling data that suggests that those who say the war was a mistake are hurting efforts on the ground. 56% believe criticism is harmful to troops on the ground, 16% believe it is not. Cheney will bring this up at Knoxville today…

There is a time and a place for criticism, the focus should be on completing the task at hand in Iraq.(a majority of Americans believe that it should be finished, and fail to see how dismissing the action is going to help complete it.) When it is done, perhaps the dems on the intelligence committee could offer up some knowledge that they lacked that would have changed the intelligence estimates. Or they can ask the intelligence community to provide the actual time at which they believed that all previous intel was in error.

The critics accuse Bush of ‘cherry picking’ and ‘stovepiping’ to make a case for war. Now they are following the same MO cherry picking and stove piping away from reality. Pot/kettle thing in full force.

In his speech on Friday and again last night Bush said that, in his opinion, people who questioned his use (or misuse) of intelligence in the run-up to the Iraq war were “deeply irresponsible.”

Perhaps if he had a better grip on reality he would understand, as you do, that 57% of Americans believe that he misused the Iraq intelligence for the purposes of justifying his decision to go to war.

I’m aware of your contention that Bush is not desperate, but what is it if not desperation that causes a president to accuse the 57% of Americans who disagree with him of being “deeply irresponsible?”

Do you agree with the president’s characterization of 57% of your fellow countrymen as irresponsible? Do you believe that it is appropriate for a president to characterize the clear majority of Americans who disagree with him in this way?

But if we elect a democrat, then would you even think to make the comparison?

I’ll state, unequivocally, we are better than Stalin.

(As far as the black prison’s go, the practice of rendition has been around for about…eternity? Turning over a guy to a foreign country and letting them torture the prisoner while the CIA is taking notes, is any different from being the ones to do the torture? Maybe we sterilize our electrodes, and give tetanusa shots before using a ball and chain.)

It’s a very gray world.