The Torture Memos

In all seriousness, I've been reading the torture memos lately, and what amazes me about them is the sheer clinical banality of... I'm not sure. Evil, maybe. This is not the work of barbarians, but of civilized men with well-scrubbed hands. These men, while discussing a very real, very horrifying act, while discussing a victim being tortured on a table, dissemble. They split hairs. They try to justify their actions. They argue that 'pain' cannot be considered to be a distinct concept from 'suffering,' and therefore because Waterboarding inflicts no physical pain, it also inflicts no 'suffering,' and therefore cannot be said to constitute inhumane treatment, or cruel or unusual punishment.

... and I look upon this, and I see people arguing back and forth, I see people arguing for and against, I see them making the inevitable good points on whether or not waterboarding can be said to inflict pain and suffering, and I see the inevitable result: the victim remains strapped to the table, and continues to be waterboarded.

There is a time for debate. It has passed. Now it is time to arrest the criminals who have so freely confessed to having tortured, having approved torture, having ordered torture, and to have them stand trial in a court of law.

We must, must, MUST prosecute. We must establish once and for all that even when the country's legal authorities themselves act unlawfully, they are still subject to the law. And we must establish that we are not a country which will allow such barbarism to be carried out in her name. Otherwise, we're no better than the very fanatics the Bush administration claims to have embraced barbarism to oppose.