It reminds me of the old test for witches - throw them in water, and, if they drown, they weren't a witch. Oops, sorry.
So now torture them, and if you don't get information, then they probably were not a terrorist - oops, sorry. The Nazis could have argued that they were justified in torturing members of the French resistance during WWII - after all, by such means, they might prevent attacks on German soldiers.
A climate that tolerates any form of torture inevitably leads to the disgusting pictures we are seeing from Abu Ghraib. By countenancing such abuse, you objectify the victim so that he is no longer considered human.
The fact that most of the prisoners in Abu Ghraib are guilty of nothing more than being Iraqi is beside the point. Torture of any human being is utterly and completely wrong and cannot be justified by any civilized society.
The U.S. must decide where it stands in the world - with those who would hold all humans to a higher standard of behavior or with the rogue states who believe that the end justifies the means, no matter how despicable those means are.
Deirdre Mac Dermott
Philadelphia
Beneath the Law
Deny communion to John Kerry?
Deny communion to Cardinal Law and all the bishops who have systematically covered up and enabled abuse within the Catholic Church for decades.
Michael McCool
Philadelphia
