[Mrs. Don-o]

I'm with you. The deliberate (directly intended, planned, targeted) infliction of severe pain or fear on any creature, human or animal, as an end in itself or as a means to an end, is morally wrong, and to compare it even remotely or ironically to Baptism, is a sacrilege.

I voted McCain-Palin in 2008 because of Palin (couldn't stand McCain then, and cant stand him now). She gets off a few good lines --- at longer and longer intervals --- but for the most part, she offers us neither good policy nor good judgment.

She has been a huge disappointment.

[Flame Retardant]

The deliberate (directly intended, planned, targeted) infliction of severe pain or fear on any creature, human or animal, as an end in itself or as a means to an end, is morally wrong, and to compare it even remotely or ironically to Baptism, is a sacrilege.

Even if there were no moral objections whatsoever to waterboarding, it would still be sacrilegious to equate it to sacred baptism, just as it would be sacrilegious to equate my morning shower or a dip in the jacuzzi to unwind with sacred baptism.

[Romulus]

What I think most supporters are unwilling to think through about the inherent evil of torture is the way it violates human dignity: by reducing a person from an end to a means.

A person who has lost or suffered grave compromise of his free will so that he can no longer obey his conscience, is no longer a moral subject as God intends.

This view also has a bearing on considerations of suicide: the guilt of those who act from extreme duress, fear, anguish, etc. may be less imputable for those reasons and allows us at least to hope that in such cases the souls of such may not be lost forever. One thinks immediately of the many who perished at the WTC on 9/11, leaping to escape the flames. Is the guilt for their deaths fully imputable to them? I believe the terrorists who did the harm bear the mortal share of the guilt. The iniquitous injustice done to the victims of 9/11, robbed of their ability to obey their consciences, does seem to relate them in a mysterious way to those subsequently tortured in pursuit of the guilty.

See the CCC:

675 Before Christ’s second coming the Church must pass through a final trial that will shake the faith of many believers. The persecution that accompanies her pilgrimage on earth will unveil the “mystery of iniquity” in the form of a religious deception offering men an apparent solution to their problems at the price of apostasy from the truth.

1865 Sin creates a proclivity to sin; it engenders vice by repetition of the same acts. This results in perverse inclinations which cloud conscience and corrupt the concrete judgment of good and evil. Thus sin tends to reproduce itself and reinforce itself, but it cannot destroy the moral sense at its root.