With the revelations that the Bush Administration has indeed waterboarded terrorism suspects, and the defense of such actions, a new term has been coined: situational torture.

Yes, those conservative paragons of principle are now using situational ethics to justify their actions. How low the cause of conservatism has sunk. These are the same folks who have no problem justifying their opposition to stem cell research, even if it ends up saving millions of lives. To do research on a human embryo, even one that would normally be flushed down the drain, is murder to them. As is letting a brain-damaged woman in Florida die, or letting a woman get an abortion because the pregnancy poses a threat to her life. To bad, they say. Have to stand on principle.

But when it comes to torture, those principles just fly out the window.

And their justifications for such deviations from principle are about as far fetched as the TV shows they evidently watch. They all seem to think that the show "24" is a true account of fighting terrorism. Their dream situation is that we have a terrorism suspect who we know has information on a planned attack, so we must torture him to get that information. And after being properly motivated, the suspect fesses up and the attack is stopped, the hero gets the girl, and all things are right again. Que the music.

In reality, how would we "know" that a suspect has information on a pending attack? And, how do we know the information obtained by torture is true? They don't tell you those things on television.

But one of the defenses that really irks me is the part were it's claimed that because we use waterboarding on our own elite soldiers as part of their training, that it isn't torture.

I've seen criticisms of this claim before, but none have ever really captured how idiotic it is.

Let's start at the beginning. Waterboarding works as a torture method because the victim feels he is dying a very painful death, in slow motion. It's the fear of death that makes this torture. Waterboarding is by far more hideous than mock executions, which are a banned form of toruture.

The soldiers know that these training exercises aren't real. There is no real war, no one is going to die and that at the end of he exercise, they will go home to their families. As much as the military wants to make these exercises real, they cannot erase this reality. It's a fake situation and everyone knows it.

The trainee being waterboarded also knows that the people who are torturing him will not let him die. But it goes even further. His make-believe torturers are his brothers-in-arms, men who have sworn what amounts to a blood oath to risk their own lives to save his. There is a bond between soldiers, a trust that they put their lives in the hands of their comrades. This can't be erased by a training exercise.

The trainee also knows that the information he is being compelled to reveal is also fake. If the trainee "breaks," there will be no harm done. The "enemy" isn't going to kill his friends, kidnap his family or destroy his country.

In the end, the trainee knows that this is simply a matter of will, a challenge to see how long he can hold out. It's like trying to hold your breath for as long as possible in a nice, safe swimming pool, as opposed to finding yourself trapped in a sinking car in the middle of a flash flood and not knowing if you can make it out alive. There is no way you can compare the two situations, and the effects they will have on the human mind.

You can't volunteer to be tortured, anymore than you can volunteer to be raped. The difference here is consent. And consent (or lack thereof) can't be faked.

Unfortunately, any logic or reasoning on this subject will fall on deaf ears in the White House. These explanations for their actions are after-the-fact excuses used to cover their backsides. There's little doubt these issues were never really debated at the time of the actual waterboardings. Their decisions were more driven by emotions than logic, a need to strike back at the enemy and prove who was more manly.

Which also brings up an interesting aside: would they feel the same torturing a woman? If one of those suspects had been female, would they have waterboarded her? And how would most Americans react to that?

Can we now get past this debate and rejoin the reality-base community?

Here is an interesting column about torture from a former JAG for the Nevada National Guard. He brings in the historical perspective about how we used to prosecute people for waterboarding.

The co-chairs of the 9/11 Commission come right out with the "O" word:

But the recent revelations that the C.I.A. destroyed videotaped interrogations of Qaeda operatives leads us to conclude that the agency failed to respond to our lawful requests for information about the 9/11 plot. Those who knew about those videotapes — and did not tell us about them — obstructed our investigation.

While the destruction of the tapes and the pretty obvious obstruction of justice the act engenders are troubling, what may be more so is what else we haven't been told about. That's the problem with a government that operates in secret. We have no idea whether they have withheld a lot more information that might have proved politically troubling or embarrassing for the administration.

When it's proven that a government lies to its citizens, it's hard to accept their pleas of "just trust us." That's why this issue, and the issue of wiretapping is important to ordinary citizens. We shouldn't trust the government to operate totally in secret and without any controls. Pretty soon, we end up with another megalomanic who uses the machinery of government to gain power and settle scores.

We don't need another Watergate to remind us of why the laws of the land must apply to everyone.

I have a lot of respect for conservatives who ditch the talking points to tell it like it is. I have no problem taking on Democrats when they need a good spanking.

So here's a hat tip to Ed Morrisey at Captain's Quarters who cuts through the BS in regard to the torture tapes destruction and the seemingly obvious obstruction of justice:

The order to destroy these tapes in defiance of Congress and the courts are very significant to the rule of law, and it deserves a full investigation. The CIA has had to retract its claim before a federal court that it had no such tapes, and the destruction came too close to Congressional debate on waterboarding to be coincidental. Someone had in mind to destroy evidence, for whatever purpose, and that is clearly obstruction of justice.

We may not like the politicians that get elected to Congress, and we may believe them unworthy of their oversight roles. Individually, that would indeed be hard to rebut. However, we base our form of government on the rule of law, and we expect those in leadership positions to remain subject to the same laws as the rest of us. That's why Bill Clinton got impeached. It's why whomever decided to operate outside the law, destroy evidence, and provide false testimony to a federal court needs to be held responsible in some manner for those actions.

If we allow elected officials and federal agencies to ignore laws simply because we like the outcome, then we do not have a rule of law but a popular tyranny of whim. We will have handed the federal government a power that we will rue when other hands are on the rudder. Let the Department of Justice and Congress conduct their lawful investigations and the chips fall where they may.

If the Bushies have lost Captain Ed, what next?

Here is an interesting discussion of torture spawned by an email from a person who backs the practice. Their basic argument is that if we do it, it's OK, but it's not OK for the other guys to do it because they are doing it for the wrong reasons.

The commenters to this piece blow holes in the argument like a machine gun. Perhaps this is one of the best:

So the argument is: "We are the good guys, and anything we do is good by definition." Funny, that's the same logic used by the bad guys.

These pro-torture people seem to forget that the terrorists consider us to be evil, therefore justifying their actions. They are fighting for a higher cause, their religion/culture/country. Once you start justifying evil actions by claiming to fight against evil, you have gone off the deep end.

News has leaked about certain Democratic members of Congress who knew a lot more about the torture practices of the CIA than they have let on. They not only knew, but it seems they raised no objections to what they now are falling all over themselves to call despicable.

Not only does this point out how hypocritical these Democrats are, but again demonstrates their lack of spine. I don't question that these Democrats really think these torture practices are wrong. What this shows is they were afraid to say this back in 2002 because they might be labeled as weak.

Please, Democrats, learn that standing up for what you believe in is not a weakness. If you don't have the backbone to stand up for your principles, then go find another job.

By now you've heard about the CIA Director Mike Hayden confirming that two videos of "extreme interrogation" of terrorism suspects did in fact exist, but were destroyed to protect the identities of the agents.

Former CIA agent Larry Johnson shreds this excuse:

But let’s assume for a moment that undercover CIA officers actually were filmed. Are you telling me that CIA has not figured out how to edit videotapes and cover the faces and voices of their personnel? I’m sure there is a 14 year old computer geek out there somewhere with a MacBook Pro who is ready and willing to help the CIA do the necessary editing to protect their personnel. The Hayden excuse does not pass the bulls--t test.

Johnson goes on to identify the real reasons:

Let’s be clear why these were destroyed–the chief of the Operations Division, Jose Rodriguez, understood that this was video evidence of torture. It was not the exposure of clandestine identities that had him fretting. It was the fear that CIA officers and contractors could be standing before a tribunal in the Hague trying to explain why the images of torture were not torture.

Then there is the potential embarrassment from showing that these extreme interrogation measures did not produce any intelligence of significance. If, for example, one of the tortured victims had spilled the beans about an impending attack on the White House or the financial towers of New York City you can be sure that evidence would be preserved and shared. At least those involved in this tawdry affair could justify violating international conventions by demonstrating that “lives were saved”. But that did not happen.

Someone may be going to jail for this one. You can debate the meaning of torture, but destroying evidence is a crime. The 9/11 Commission specifically asked for this material and was told it didn't exist. There were also court cases for terrorism suspects where these materials were requested. That amounts to obstruction of justice, and could end up turning some terrorists free, with some CIA officials taking their place in prison.

It's not the crime that gets you sometimes, it's the coverup.

...but were afraid to ask. From a former Navy SEAL instructor who is an expert in the subject.

For all of you who thought that putting the Dems in charge would change things, think again.

Since senators Chuck Schumer and Dianne Feinstein seem to have so little problem with waterboarding, perhaps we can strap them down and waterboard them until they stop undermining their party, their country and their Constitution.

If anyone needed proof that it doesn't take brains to become a senator, here it is. Hey, idiots, even the American people strongly disapprove of waterboarding. Can't you get it through your think heads that Bush is playing game with you? If you keep handing him easy victories on every battle, then you deserved to be voted out of office. You are pathetic.

What's even more pathetic is that your failure to take a stand, supposedly to fend off attacks that they are weak on terrorism, only ends up making them look weak, period. If these gutless wonders and their fellow Democrats can't take a stand on anything important like this, then they should resign and let someone who is not afraid to fight take your place.

For background, here is the ABC News story on the former assistant AG who went to great lengths to explore whether torture is legal.