Actually, a pastor should speak against torture. I say that as an Army Chaplain who has taught some of our finest classes on Battlefield Ethics. We must stand against anything that dehumanizes our troops.
It's bad enough what they legitimately must do and see. Please, let's not send them home with the spiritual baggage of what they OUGHT NOT to have done. The baggage of what they justly have done is a terrible burden. The unjust baggage is a continual, ongoing wound to the conscience.
That said, have we CERTAINLY conducted torture at any of these places?
Not at Gitmo. Nothing I've read convinces me that they've crossed the line.
Abu Ghraib? Unfortunately, they are more indictable for the demented and licentious than for the illegal. However, a very few were convicted of the illegal. In conclusion, it is BEST to say that our troops are in the clear. A group of the demented of less than squad size are guilty of illegal, immoral acts.
Haditha & Hamdaniya? They are innocent.
PREACHERS must know precise information, though, to point fingers. If they don't have it, then they should make front and center, absolutely certain that everyone knows as the most important point that they are engaging in sheer speculation.
No one is IN FAVOR of torture, but these pastors speaking out against the American military and insinuating they are guilty before proven innocent is just plain out of line. If they want to speak out, let it be in generic terms, and include our enemies who practice REAL and EXTREME torture!
None of us are in a position to know. We depend on a biased media and a military who has an interest in minimizing their misdeeds for this information.
That said, the indications are that Abu Gharib was a breakdown of the military command structure; there is scant credible evidence for Gitmo, and no one outside the USMC really knows what happend at Haditha at this point.
Pastors - and Christians in general - have an obligation to demand of our government that, if they wish us to continue our support for the war, then our troops must continue to fight justly. As a civilian, the moment the evidence shows that the war is being fought unjustifiably brutally with unconscionable tactics, that's the moment I join the anti-war crowd.
None of us condone any kind of "torture" for the sake of gratifying our lust for punishment or our sense of justice. That being said, inflicting pain or misery for the purpose of garnering information critical to the survival of our troops or our nation is not "tortue". As long as the person is not permanently crippled by the experience, I think we need to give our interrogators some leeway.
This declaration is simply a way of criticizing our troops for even being in a position where we can gather information on terrorists. In that sense, their compassion is going to get me killed. I have faith that we do not engage in pulling out fingernails or dipping people in acid. On the other hand if using a cattle prod can prod some useful information out of a terrorist, I'm not going to condemn it. These idiots think that putting underwear on a terrorist's head is tantamount to "torture". I'm sure that these idiots would consider it toruture to feed them food which is not officially a holy food by mulim standards.
I say dress them all in women's clothing and feed them nothing but bacon and whiskey until they cooperate. If that is torture, then the word has no meaning.