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.
I am sure our pro terrorist posters who support McCrazy and his pro-terrorist stand will love to see this:
Report: Video Posted of U.S. Soldiers' Bodies Being Burned
You mean besides Jesus Christ?
Every American citizen is his own sovereign judge of American policy and what is right for it, and every man is judge of morality. It is called being free, look it up.
"not to mention who is going to hell"
Does it bother you to admit that all unrepentent torturers are damnable? It is perfectly obvious and sound theology. I for one still have a scruple or two about requiring our servicemen and agents to damn themselves. I realize pay has gone up recently and pensions are more livable, but really, it is a lot to ask and the food is still terrible.
Now pretend conservatives object to considering Edmund Burke, who founded the political philosophy. The new maxim is "anything that gets in the way of torturing my enemies I can dismiss". The declaration can also be laughed off with scorn as a piece of hypocrasy. OK, if we laugh that off as hypocrasy, I'd be within my rights to enslave you. More, it would be just, your own cynicism recoiling on your own head.
Nobody said they were Americans, and nobody said they are covered by the Geneva convention as a matter of existing obligation under that treaty, to which they are not a party. But plenty say we ought to treat them in the manner described in that treaty, as a matter of policy and our own moral conduct. We are freely deciding how we should treat them, and the answer is, as human beings, ergo we morally may not torture them. Because we freely choose not to be torturers. Because being a torturer is being fit to feed worms, and we aspire to something better. We simply disdain to use such means.
"I am defending THE PRESIDENT"
Actually, you are advocating torture and defending it as expedient. He mostly isn't, and has asked the congress to issue clarified rules of conduct in the matter. They are doing so, and they are clearly saying "don't use torture", and are right to say it.
"and what his military has told him works."
Some may have told him torture works, but as grand strategy it is way above their pay grade, and as morality it is higher still. Grand strategy is for the entire government to decide, including the congress. And morality is for the citizenry as a whole to decide. Torture famously worked so well in Algeria that after a million dead, two coups and a revolution in France, the French lost and left. Because the political divisions sparked by the torture policy ripped France apart and made any continued hawkish policy in Algeria politically impossible.
When your country is stepping off a cliff, it is your duty to warn it not to.
"What "fell to ashes"?
Atlanta. Dixie. Everything built on the idea that slavery and torture were expedient. All the cynics who scorned the principles of the declaration as meaningless idealistic twaddle and rhetoric - they are dead and buried, the worms ate them, and everything they tried in their foolish faith in the expediency of cruelty produced only division, death and destruction.
"Since when are YOU GOD?"
I was deified last Tuesday in a small ceremony to which only close friends were invited. No, actually, I have a commission to decide all moral questions for myself and to use all the political power I may possess in service of right as I am given light to see it. The issuing authority is a little higher than the caretaker executive of one modern state. When did you decide the president is a pharaoh?
"If torturers are all damned and I have never committed torture upon another person, than I am not "damned"."
That is almost a dictionary definition of non sequitor. You might be damned for some future murder or your present (hypothetical) avarice for all I know. That torturers are damned does not imply anyone who is not a torturer is not. Also, the defender of a wrong is as guilty as the committer of that wrong - in their heart they have committed the act themselves. One might charitably make some allowance for knowing not what they do - which many stand in dire need of.
"EVERYTHING is TORTURE"
If your intention is to inflict sufficient violent suffering on another human being to eradicate his will and replace it with your own, then that is torture. And which particular poker you use or which particular nerve endings your bang on is as irrelevant as whether the stake burners used oak or pine.
"I am well aware that some men and even some women, gain sexual gratification from torture"
Good, now reason. This being the case, policy and authority has to guard against encouraging such deviance. It has to remove the occasion for it, and it has to be suspicious of the motives of anyone advocating such practices. It has to avoid trusting those trained in such a school, some of whom will inevitably like it, develop a taste for it, and seek other occasions to gratify that sick desire. When entrusting men with full power over other human beings, it must ensure that power is used for the purposes for which it was granted, and not other hopelessly indefensible ones. Otherwise it will pollute its own justice and majesty with the lowest vices in human nature, and make itself justly hated.
Which is easy to do. You forbid torture, renounce it as a policy, and punish those who engage in it. Precisely what previous laws did, and our representatives are trying to ensure is still observed.
"There is absolutely NO evidence at all, that those Americans who have (tortured others) deriving sexual stimulation and gratification from doing so."
Absolutely no evidence at all, huh? Nobody took pictures of themselves or their girlfriends leading prisoners around on leashes and sent them to their boyfriends or other girlfriends, then. Right. And nobody was court martialed over it, either. Not hypothetical, already in the headlines. Minor stuff to be sure, because caught in time by basically decent people. Who, note well, did not try to defend it, but instead punished it.