And if you dissent from that creed or think it silly, then you simply aren't an American.
You will notice the creed does not read, "all men being equally breakable by torture, the torturers shall run everything by breaking whoever they please, and justice is for patsies". Which is the actual creed of our enemies, and the one you are defending in this thread.
You will notice that all the ways in which America departed from that ideal or fell short of it, have been reduced to ashes, liberally paid for in blood, to be sure. If you are really trying to defend torture as "all-american" on the grounds that slaves were tortured so why shouldn't we, then it is time to refight the civil war and burn your house to the ground, too.
"You're quite facile at consigning me to hell"
Actually you elect that yourself. I say torturers are damned - because they are - you nominate yourself as one of them. You could just as easily renounce it, so who is consigning whom again? Also, I'm the one showing concern about the souls of those doing it, you are the one maintaining that sullying souls is worth it to defend others (who neither need, asked for, nor want such services and vigorously reject them).
"using vulgar/coarse sexual terms ( which are against posting rules"
LOL. You condone torture but can't stand harsh language on an internet chat board - what a flaming pansy of a bully! I was in fact being entirely clinical about the actual course of deviance and perversion systematic practice of torture always and everywhere occasions, and cited actual well established cases of it. You may find the description in Arendt, and will find it is not even her characterization but first person confession.
Does it bother you that male human beings exist who achieve sexual arosal by torturing other human beings? Do you deny the fact? (Clinically perfectly well known). Do you deny that perverted sadism exists, and that many men are susceptible to it?
Burke in one place discusses the danger of excusing murder and rapine on the pretext of public benefit, that soon enough public benefit will become merely the pretext, and murder and rapine the end. The same happens with torture. First men torture out of misguided expediency on the tortured, then they torture out of policy for its effects on others, to create fear and accumulate political power, pass through a stage of torturing in hot blood for revenge, and they end by torturing for pure pleasure, even if it harms them in every other respect.
That is the mere history of the subject. You can nominate yourself for any stage of the proceedings, I don't care where along it you yourself fall. I've no doubt whatever where it tends or ends. Perhaps with you strapped to a board being sawn in pieces by an Iranian agent. Whatever. What fiends do to one another is of no moral consequence, only men not already damned have souls to save.
"what we have and have NOT done to prisoners"
If you review my comments, you will find them entirely free of the slightest allegation. I respond to what others publically defend, showing that it is indefensible. They advocate or confess as the case may be, by calling for practice X or defending practice Y. I never force them to do either. I explain things that are forbidden by moral decency, and others act offended and then strike attitudes about how righteous they are. Um, a righteous man would not see the comments as in any way directed at himself, would agree entirely, say "sure, can't have any of that, it never happens and is not needed". That is conspicuously not your own response, or that of the other blood thirsty fantasists who have been regaling these boards with their fantasies of torture, while the matter has been debated in congress.
I am 40 years old, a veteran, a republican, a conservative, a straussian, a founding member of vast right wing conspiracies, a platonist and a heretic of no particular affiliation. And you are a useful idiot convert of Ahmadinejad helping to lose this war, as well as a fiend, who deserves not the slightest particle of responsibility or power.
Who died and made you the grand high whatever, who gets to decide who is a "real" American and who isn't; not to mention who is going to hell or not?
Quoting an Englishman, who wrote fiction, isn't exactly all that helpful to your benighted rantings.
Oh yeah...."all men are created equal", except for Negros and women sure don't count either.
Ummmmmmmmmmmmmm....battlefield combatants, sans uniform, who are caught fighting AMERICANS, in foreign lands AREN'T AMERICANS and aren't covered by the Geneva Convention.
BTW, I am defending THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA and what his military has told him works. You aren't, which makes YOU the UNAMERICAN, here.
What "fell to ashes"?
Since when are YOU GOD? If torturers are all damned and I have never committed torture upon another person, than I am not "damned". And since you appear to think that anything and EVERYTHING is TORTURE, including playing loud rock music ( which, BTW, was used on Noriaga, successfully ), then there are a LOT of torturers all over the world....and I'm talking about civilians, who need to turn down their car radios!
Yes, I am well aware that some men and even some women, gain sexual gratification from torture/being tortured; they are both clinically deranged mental states. Sadists enjoy inflicting bodily and mental harm on others; masochists ( something you are a case study of ) enjoy being tortured and abused. I fall into neither category; however, I knew about this subject ( from school; not personal experience ) long before you were even a gleam in your father's eye!
You like to call other people names and impugn their character, when in fact, it is you who are the exemplar of the very things you hurl at others. That is called PROJECTION and you really should seek help for all of your mental problems.
There is absolutely NO evidence at all, that those Americans who have deprived battlefield combatants and higher ups of sleep, kept them in a room that is about 40 degrees, or water boarded them, deriving sexual stimulation and gratification from doing so. OTOH, the more you talk about it, the more convinced that YOU are the one who has this sexual perversion yourself.
You aren't married, I bet.
Sweetums, I am a FOUDING member of the VRWC and was one, long BEFORE you were even born.