ALL AMERICANS AGREE THAT TORTURE IS BAD, RIGHT? WELL... RIGHT WING EXTREMISTS HAVE A SLIGHTLY DIFFERENT VIEW

Bush, who will hopefully face a war crimes tribunal, etc one day for his perversion of all that is best about the American ideal, doesn't exactly come out and say torture is OK. He just redefines what it is and claims we don't do it.

This was the first IM I got this morning

ireallyavoidims (9:32:02 AM): how did we get to the point where people are actually DEBATING whether torture is okay or not?

This morning's Washington Post features an interesting story about a group of WWII veterans whose job was to get information from Nazi prisoners. The Nazis-- the right-wing fanatics supported, aided, abetted by the Bush Family-- with whom our country and world freedom were in a life and death struggle with. It was all out war, the real thing.

When about two dozen veterans got together yesterday for the first time since the 1940s, many of the proud men lamented the chasm between the way they conducted interrogations during the war and the harsh measures used today in questioning terrorism suspects.

Back then, they and their commanders wrestled with the morality of bugging prisoners' cells with listening devices. They felt bad about censoring letters. They took prisoners out for steak dinners to soften them up. They played games with them.

"We got more information out of a German general with a game of chess or Ping-Pong than they do today, with their torture," said Henry Kolm, 90, an MIT physicist who had been assigned to play chess in Germany with Hitler's deputy, Rudolf Hess.

Like most Americans, these former citizen soldiers pretty much see Bush as the scum of the earth and his torture policies as a disgrace to the honor of our country. "Several of the veterans, all men in their 80s and 90s, denounced the controversial techniques. And when the time came for them to accept honors from the Army's Freedom Team Salute, one veteran refused, citing his opposition to the war in Iraq and procedures that have been used at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba."

One of the men, now 87 explained that he never laid a hand on a prisoner. "We extracted information in a battle of the wits. I'm proud to say I never compromised my humanity." Neither did Bush and the band of Republican war criminals around him. They never had any to compromise-- or if they did, they lost it long before the joined the vicious and avaricious criminal enterprise known and the Bush Regime.


UPDATE: EVEN CRIMINAL REGIME SUPPORTERS WHO HAVE COMPROMISED THEIR HUMANITY TO FOLLOW BUSH DOWN THE ROAD TO PERDITION ARE ABANDONING HIM

Today's L.A. Times has the story about how Air Force Col. Morris Davis, the chief prosecutor for the Guantanamo military commissions, "a steadfast supporter of the controversial detention and judicial processes" there, has resigned.

Davis' departure occurred amid reported disagreement within the Office of Military Commissions about how to proceed with war-crimes trials amid pending U.S. federal court challenges and pressure from the Bush administration to produce convictions.

...Asked why he was leaving his position, Davis said in an e-mail message that he was "ordered not to communicate with the news media about my resignation or military commissions without the prior approval of the Department of Defense General Counsel and the Department of Defense Public Affairs."

I believe Rep. Henry Waxman reads the L.A. Times on a daily basis. I hope he doesn't wait too long on this.