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Thank you. I've felt that way about it ever since it first became an issue. I liken it to the death penalty. I have yet to find a person who is totally against the death penalty in all cases who has had someone they love brutally murdered. And I have known people who were against the death penalty, and then when someone they love was murderd, they wanted death for the "so and so". That same kind of situational ethics applies with those who are so self righteous against physical means of extracting information as a absolute last resort when the clock is ticking. And as a historian, when I think of torture, I think of the Romans, the Ottomans, the Nazis, the Soviets, the Khmir Rouge, the NVA/Viet Cong. THEY, THEY were capable of real torture. Smacking some guy around, putting underwear on his head, having a dog bark at him, stripping him naked, hosing him down, depriving him of sleep. That's not torture. College punks do that every fall for kicks.

And to get to the bottom line of it, I would have no compunction beating the snot out of someone if he was a known terrorist and associate with those planning to carry out an imminent attack on the U.S.. I stress KNOWN TERRORIST, ASSOCIATE, and IMMINENT. Not some random act of smacking a guy around to see if you can get some generic non-specific info out of him for kicks. But when it's down to the wire, you know something's about to happen and you know the guy you have knows names, places, times, or all of the above. And by beating on him some, you can get those things out of him and stop that attack. I say with a clear conscience that I would stand before Christ Himself and say on bended knee, "I am sorry I had to do it, but to save innocent lives from death in an attack they didn't provoke, I felt I had to beat on this individual to get the information needed to stop the attack and save those innocent lives, children surely being among them." And I take that scenario VERY seriously when I say that. If smacking some sub-human terrorist around, causing him to bleed and bruise a little, saves lives, and stops an attack, well. Anyone who has a problem with that has their priorities way out of whack in my firmly held opinion.