Hey Carole, checkout todays KNS, it look like ET maybe getting its own version of Blackwater, its called Echota Tactical Training Center and maybe located in Lake City. Proposed Center will come fully equipped, including a 1,000-meter sniper firing range. HOW ABOUT THEM APPLES!

Where do you draw the line?

The very attempt to draw lines is the problem, as Michael Kinsley noted in this great column:

[O]nce you accept that torture would be justified in one situation, avoiding the use of torture on other situations is no longer a moral imperative. The question becomes where you draw the line.

In law school, they call this..."salami-slicing." You start with a seemingly solid principle, then start slicing: If you would torture to save a million lives, would you do it for half a million? A thousand? Two dozen? What if there's only a two-out-of-three chance that person you're torturing has the crucial information? A 50-50 chance? One chance in 10? At what point does your moral calculus change, and why? Slice the salami too far, and the formerly solid principle disappears.

The same thing happens when one attempts to slice the "cruel and unusual" or "shocks the conscience" standard and define what particular forms of torture is lawful.

Torture does not work as an interrogation technique. Rather than give up information, the victims of torture tend to say whatever they feel is expected of them in order to halt the torture. In my opinion, if you have to ask if something is wrong or is torture then it is in fact torture.

I read a comment somewhere in the last few days that in essence said"If you would not mind it being done to a US soldier it is not torture. Or something like that.

The Huffington Post had an interesting little article on this very subject.

The video is disturbing to watch, but makes a very graphic point.

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"You can't fix stupid..." ~ Ron White"
"I never said I wasn't a brat..." ~ Talidapali

What's particularly troubling is that, unlike Gonzales, Mukasey is not a vicious idiot; he knows perfectly well how dangerous compromise can be in an area with such dire consequences as torture. Yet he's still willing to make this Faustian bargain. As Jack Balkin puts it

The Bush Admininstration will not nominate anyone to be Attorney General who will state publicly that what the Administration did was illegal or dishonorable. That means that the only persons who can be nominated are those who are willing to be complicit in its illegality and dishonor. For if the nominee admitted that the Administration had repeatedly misled the American people about the legality of its actions, he would not be welcome in the Bush Administration.

It is a bit like Groucho Marx's famous line: To be Attorney General in the Bush Administration requires apology for lawbreaking and torture. No Attorney General with any self respect should want to join an Administration like this that would have him as a member.

This is what we've come to. Because we've failed to call out this administration for what it is and hold it to account, we're all but forced to hold our noses and slice the big salami.