One should also remember that the U.S. is the biggest exporter of torture weapons in the world, though the U.K. is not far behind in the league table. We never stopped, even under Robin Cook's supposedly ethical foreign policy.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Torture has been privatized now, so you have obviously the whole scandal in America about the abuse of prisoners and the fact that, army people might be made to pay a price, but who are the privatized torturers accountable too?
If torture is going to be administered as a last resort in the ticking-bomb case, to save enormous numbers of lives, it ought to be done openly, with accountability, with approval by the president of the United States or by a Supreme Court justice.
Even if torture works, what is the point of 'defending' America using a tactic that is a fundamental violation of what America ought to mean?
We do, and there is a law in the United States - the Torture Convention - that prohibits the United States from deporting an individual to a country where there is a reasonable expectation that he will be subjected to torture - physical, mental or otherwise.
Torture fails to make us safe, but it certainly makes us less free.
Regrettably, it has become clear that torture of detainees in United States custody is not limited to Abu Ghraib or even Iraq. Since Abu Ghraib, there have been increasing reports of torture.
'We don't torture' is the anguished cry of squishy people who have decided that trying to frighten terrorists by roughing them up is somehow the very definition of torture.
America does not torture. We never have, and we never will.
We are America; we don't torture. And the moment that is not the case, I want off the train.
Torture is illegal, both in the U.S. and abroad. So - and that is true for the Bush administration and for any other administration.