Now, a central argument a lot of the friendlier Muslim nations have been presenting is that America does not stand for the morals it preaches, that we claim to be friends yet push in through the door, drop Coke bombs and Nike bombs and trample on the beliefs of a region that didn't want our influence, thank you very much. So we somehow found ourselves in Iraq (I knew I shoulda made that left turn at Albuquerque) and instead of coming in as the proponents of the Geneva Convention, we do this. Not only do we do this, but we do it with a grin for the cameras.

I do believe our leaders had a heavy thumbprint on these actions, yet I also recognize that many of these soldiers were enjoying some of this, if only a little. Some maybe more so. Oh, and for anyone who thinks that torture produces quality intelligence, intelligence worth the price of a nation's soul, let me tell you. You'll say anything anyone wants you to with their gun at your head and their dog at your balls.

And have you considered that the government officials who have lowered the United States from its former first-world perch on issues like torture and habeus corpus are the very same ones who have obsessively placed federal judges who will accept Neanderthal restrictions against abortion and/or overturn Roe v. Wade? Please identify your “clear collective thinking” on that score.

This idea that torture, if used for only a few years, can serve as a deterrent for some period of time after it's no longer in use? That's quite simply repugnant. And you were intellectually dishonest to quote one line of a Dershowitz column that otherwise argued against the systematic use of torture — not that Dershowitz is any sort of all-knowing genius, considering that in the same column he trumpeted Giuliani's then-frontrunning tough-guy persona as the wave of the future.

Last week in a Congressional hearing, Bush administration officials were asked to identify a single real-world occasion in which the “smoking-gun” theory of torture permissiveness might have been an effective tool in questioning a suspected terrorist. The answer? Crickets. C'mon, Eric–just because Jack Bauer makes something work on TV (even if it's Fox) doesn't make it real…

In fact, your Jack Bauer paragraph sounds like something Stephen Colbert would say. The only difference is, he'd be making fun of you by saying it.

By the way, I don't know what Gallup poll you were looking at, but I just looked up a poll from last year showing that only 18 percent of Americans–not 40, or anywhere near it–believe that abortion should be illegal in all circumstances; that only 31percent believe abortion restrictions should be any tighter than they already are; and that only 16 percent view abortion as a make-or-break issue when choosing a candidate. Yes, around 43 percent identify themselves as “pro-life,” but that identification obviously doesn't translate into policy demands for a large number of those folks. That poll is here: http://www.gallup.com/poll/1576/Abortion.aspx.

Following the Golden Rule — which is an Old Testament and a New Testament (i.e. words of Jesus, for those of you in Rio Linda) rule — I can't abide torture generally. But if I had been responsible for what some of the worst terrorists have done, I confess that I would deserve torture as much as they did. To save lives, in extreme cases? I don't see how one can completely rule it out. I think Alan Dershowitz has made a reasoned case for the very limited application of torture. He even points out, contrary to your assertion, Jon:

“There are some who claim that torture is a nonissue because it never works–it only produces false information. This is simply not true, as evidenced by the many decent members of the French Resistance who, under Nazi torture, disclosed the locations of their closest friends and relatives.” sauce: http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature...

Also, Abu Ghraib has not been entirely counterproductive. Many prisoners think torture is still the normal mode of operation, and this can lead them to be more cooperative in regular, non-torture, methods of interrogation. They fear being sent to facilities where treatment will be… torturous. Such fear was in fact instrumental in gaining intelligence leading to the capture of Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, described in Mark Bowden's piece in the Atlantic Monthly last May.

In the end, the thought of very evil terrorists being made to suffer the horrors of the damned is probably not as upsetting to most Americans as the elitist liberals think it ought to be. It doesn't conjure up an image equivalent to beating a harp seal pup to death. It conjures up an image of Jack Bauer injecting a traitor or terrorist who plots to kill millions a taste of unimaginable pain. And *that* looks something like just desserts.

Still, if you really don't like torture, Senator John McAmnesty is a fine candidate for consideration. I don't think anyone can seriously doubt that he has a sincere, absolutely bedrock conviction about it.