I wish more information on the bill that bars cruel and degrading treatment of prisoners would get published. I'd like to know what exactly is spelled out as 'cruel and degrading' treatment. I have seen laws and regulations pushed to the limit in both directions and that could easily be taken advantage of and tie the hands of anyone attempting to gain information. Almost any treatment could be considered degrading. At the same time, we cannot participate in or condone torture. It puts our own citizens at risk when captured and is morally wrong. If my life is at stake I can imagine going to great lengths to protect it or my child's. With terrorists it is a fine line to walk. When is it considered an imminent threat to our country and how do you get the information of any upcoming imminent threat if there is nothing to entice terrorists to talk? I'm afraid that we are caught in a no win situation at this point.


>I could be wrong (it happened in 1962, it could happen again) but it seems to me that it has become more institutionalised with this government. Did you read the news reports about the CIA exemption that the administration is looking for? Has any government so brazenly tried to formalise this sort of thing before? You're far more a student of the U.S. system than I am, and of course, having been in the forces, you have knowledge I certainly don't. Am I wrong about how this government seems to be pushing the envelope of bad behaviour more? Are we really just noticing it more.
>
>>This is the same America we've had all along. The public is just now learning what government they have been funding and supporting and voting for over the years. It didn't start with George Bush. It didn't start with any president in the last 10 years. There have been jointly run containment camps (they weren't referred to as prisons before) in other countries for at least 20 years, maybe longer. Now that it is in the open I guess it's not classified anylonger. What does everyone think a safehouse is? It is not always to hide our citizens but also to contain anyone the government wants to sequester. Who oversaw those locations? It was never 'right' but it got the job done (or whatever job they thought it needed to perform) which is questionable in itself.
>>
>>
>>>>- snippety snip - see inline..
>>>>>>Again assumptions are being made of the goings-on. How is it different? No reports of people getting "eliminated" in prisons.
>>>>>
>>>>>Being that the proceedings there are secret, it stands to reason that there are no reports about anything at all.
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>Ah but the concern is that prisoners are being abused, not killed. You're taking my example and turning that against me, no fair. Having said that, (and no such prior reports) no it does not stand to reason.
>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>Well I can't argue with that last sentence.. but:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>You focus on the treatment, I focus on the purpose. Perhaps it's because you have not been the target of terrorism? And I'm not saying the ends justify the means, but we have to worry about those ends.
>>>>>
>>>>>If the means we use are no different than the means they use, then how are we better than they are? Why would the US administration want to write the ban on abuse law to exempt the CIA if 'American Values' are supposedly always in play in the treatment of prisoners?
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>This is what you don't seem to want to see: I'm not talking about values here, I'm talking about lives. My point is not about who's morally better, but who's lives are being protected. If you want to protest about the means fine, but to me that is not at the top of the priority list. Again I'm not saying that is not important, but as a dweller it is not as important as preventing more attacks. And again, it has not been determined that abuses are the norm.
>>>
>>>When a government can grab anyone it wants off the street and spirit him/her away into a secret camp where anything can happen, and that person simply no longer has any rights under the laws that used to define a democratic society, it is no longer operating a democracy as we know it. So what exactly are they protecting? Certainly not 'the American way' of life. This is no different than the way the Gestapo or the KGB operated. This is the America you want? I'm stunned.
>>>
>>>>
>>>>>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/24/AR2005102402051.html
>>>>>http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/view.php?StoryID=20051025-085239-4576r