Torture

You've heard all the reasons why our military — or any other American entity, for that matter — should not engage in torture: It's a violation of the Geneva Conventions, it's a violation of one treaty or another, it's not productive (and may even generate false alarms), "we shouldn't do it because then They can do it to our people," or even, in the case of the present Administration, "we don't include what we are doing in our definition of torture."

Too complicated, too arguable. It should be just this simple: It's not us. It's not who we are. It's not who we want to be. It's not how we want to be known.

But how to get around that hypothetical posited in almost every argument: "What if we are about to be hit with an awful terrorist act and have a guy in our possession who we know can tell us how to stop it?"

Y'know what? I suspect that if such an attack is truly imminent someone, somehow, will do something to elicit the information even if it means being punished, ultimately, for breaking the law. And maybe that person will even be honored instead of punished.

In the meantime, unless and until such dreadful circumstances arise, our government should not be engaging in ANY form of torture — as defined by the world, not by Bush & Co.

That's just not who we are.