Over at Right-Thinking, I’ve gotten this in response to opposing torture:

So, there is NO WAY to get information from a prisoner. Drugs? Thats torture, because it’s against his/her will. Asking nicely? No, that’s torture, because you think of the prisoner as an idiot and it insults him/her. And as we all know insulting a prisoner (a naked women in the room with a muslim) is torture. Just having a muslim prisoner being questioned by an inferior infidel is humiliating to said muslim, and humiliation is torture. Offering a cup of coffee and not tea to a muslim prisoner is torture. An interrogator eating a ham sandwich in front of a muslim prisoner is torture. All these don’t even have to do with muslims, and can be turned around by anyone looking to be a victim.

I’m sick of this ad hominem bullshit. If I say that water-boarding and sleep deprivation are torture, I therefore think that anything is torture. I’m a namby-pamby flower-sniffing, tree-hugging liberal who just thinks we should give all terror suspects blow jobs.

Why is it so hard for people to wrap your their minds around the idea that there are acceptable and unacceptable means of interrogation? Anything that threatens or inflicts physical pain or fear of death is, by the definition listed in our treaties and our laws, torture. Anything that doesn’t is acceptable. We don’t go have to go all culture-sensitivity patrol but can still be effective.

Read this excerpt from the Army Field Manual on effective interrogation techniques. Thinks like simple questioning, “good cop bad cop”, incentives, rapid-fire questions, yellling, appeal to family, appeal to ego. None of these are considered torture. Just because you don’t waterboard someone doesn’t mean you become a wuss.

Now these techniques – which involve nothing more than a patient interrogator, sound wimpy don’t they? “Oh Mike”, you say, “You pussy! That won’t work. That’s just namby-pamby liberal bullshit. We need to beat ‘em up!”

But you know what? We found them effective for two hundred years. The Soviet Union used these techniques when they wanted information, not breaking. The Israelis use them all the time. And cops use them in our own country so effectively that the vast majority of crimes are solved by uncoerced confession.

There is a difference between interrogation and torture. And I’m sick and tired of the Orwellian Newspeak that blurs the line between the two.

How repulsive is Dick Cheney? Sullivan’s been documenting his support for reckless war on Iran. Now he’s slamming Geneva at West Point.

“Capture one of these killers, and he’ll be quick to demand the protections of the Geneva Convention and the Constitution of the United States,” the Vice President said in the Saturday morning speech. “Yet when they wage attacks or take captives, their delicate sensibilities seem to fall away.”

I am so fucking sick of this line of reasoning. “Al-Quaeda doesn’t observe Geneva, why should we?”

Why? Because we’re better than they are!. The British and Hessians were brutal in their occupation during the War of Independence; Washington insisted on humane treatment. The South had Andersonville; Lincoln had reasonable prisons. The Germans, Japanese, Koreans and Vietnamese tortured our people; we didn’t. Douglas MacArthur specifically instructed his soldiers to treat POW’s with honor. Because he wanted them to know that ciitizens of a Democracy were better, that their leaders were lying to them about how Americans tortured all prisoners. He defined America by a bright moral standard.

The Right is always railing against moral relativism. Liberals and Libertarians are supposed to be a threat to the very fiber of the nation because we tolerate gays, question drug prohibition and oppose abortion criminalization. But now they want us to define our morality relative to Al-Quaeda. What kind of broken is your moral compass when gay marriage is a threat to our national integrity but torture is OK?

Dick Cheney can define his moral compass by Al-Quaeda. I’ll define mine by George Washington, Abe Lincoln and Douglas MacArthur.

You know things are bad when you’re borrowing euphemisms from the Nazis.

Bush. He’s made everything liberals have ever said about conservatives true.

Ha! I knew people were getting too bent out of shape over the Muslim poll:

A reader writes:

What hasn’t been talked about much in the just released Pew poll is that, while 47 percent consider themselves Muslim first and American second, 42 percent consider themselves Christian first and American second.

And while 43 percent of American Muslims think mosques/churches should express views on political/social issues, 54 percent of American Christians think likewise.

I certainly hope America has enough genius to assimilate those Christians, too.

Another adds:

Clearly, there are troubling aspects to the poll, the suicide bombing response in particular. However, when it comes to issues of governance and influence there are parallels. A Pew poll from August 24, 2006 yielded the following: “(S)ix-in-ten white evangelical Protestants say that the Bible should be the guiding principle in making laws when it conflicts with the will of the people.”

From the same 2006 poll, 67 percent of those polled believe “the U.S. is a Christian nation.”

I would also add that 5% of Muslim liking Al-Quaeda is nothing to panic over. You can get 5% of people to agree to anything. And while it’s a concern that 20% of Muslims think suicide bombings are OK, I wonder what percentage of Christians think bombing abortion clinics or stoning gays is OK.

It is distressing that only 25% of Muslims accept the truth of 9/11. But then again, many Americans won’t accept the truth about JFK. What else do I have to say? People are stupid, Muslim, Christian, Jew or atheist, idiocy is universal.