ABC News Cites Torture - A reaction;

Congress had a hearing that determined that America is not guilty of torture. If it is the first of its kind, I'd be surprised; it cannot be the last...

...for the following reason:

To lack the resolve to torture Internationally, is to invite mischief. A terrorist who is guaranteed ALL American privileges of citizenship at trial, including pain and suffering damages, (with mental anguish punitive phase,) repeats, Judicially, the offenses that must have precipitated the trial.

The A_theist C_ivil L_iberties U_nion took the position that what we did was misrepresented. "It was TORTURE," they say, "not NOT TORTURE!"

When asked if we had gone too far, Dick Cheney went on the record for "No, we didn't."

I'd rather face a terrorist in the street who had to satisfy Dick Cheney's yard-stick for "Too far in retribution to terrorism," than the ACLU's measuring stick for how well terrorists should be treated. In a mechanized system of true "tit for tat," (the atheist -and also Mathematical- way of talking about Judeo-Christian "an eye for an eye,") the terrorist could not prevail. Tit-for-tat, when slavishly followed plays to stale-mate so reliably that very few decisive outcomes need be feared. "Nothing's gonna happen."

Again, speaking Mathematically, tit-for-tat CAN BE decisively WON. However, in ALL cases (prove me wrong,) when faced with certain defeat, a tit-for-tat player may freely depart from the tit-for-tat strategy by anticipating defeat, and play to victory in a stunningly small number of moves, IF he is not mechanistically bound to following the tit-for-tat agreement.

The terrorist is not bound by law. As such, stripping him of the euthanistic quality of the death penalty, in the name of defeating ALL Martyrs, is wrong. I compensate by advocating reinstatement of Habeas Corpus, and embarrassing ALL the abusers who arrested people without ANY evidence unilaterally.

Again, torturing terrorists may be necessary as a deterrent, but I cannot advocate making it SOP. However, is it going too far, to take militarily self-destructive (non-leading,) "machines," and dedicating them to the sole purpose of deterrent? No human being alive cannot understand the regulating authority of the Colt Peacemaker.

Responsibility should not be laid upon those without authority. Given authority to act, the forceful animator _should_ be held accountable. The latitude he enjoys during the interim, should be commensurate to virtue of his _character_. Do we have equal political will to hold those responsible, who injured these enemies with such injustice that we are NEGLIGENT if we release them ALIVE? They certainly enjoyed latitude.

Power reliably corrupts. Absolute power has apparently corrupted even God. The argument to abuse is no argument against the proper use.