It's appalling that we even have to ask if a mainstream American Presidential candidate is against torture.

Like you said, it's wrong *and* it doesn't work.

I agree in general with what you have written here. I disagree, and strongly, with your answer to the question, "Is the GOP the party of torture?"

Not yet, you say. How much more would it take?

A Republican president approved of our country's departure from civilized conduct in war. A Republican defense secretary did likewise. A number of Republicans in the Justice Department gave entirely bogus legal justifications for it, and, in recognition of this work, one of them was promoted to Attorney General.

Individual Republicans denounced these acts here and there, but for the most part the Republican base and the conservative commentariat cheered them on. Some of these even continued to call themselves Christians, too.

The Republican-controlled Congress, which probably should have begun impeachment hearings (and which certainly would have done so if it had caught Democrats behaving this way), instead passed the Military Commissions Act, which made it impossible for foreign detainees to seek legal remedies against this treatment, and which shielded perpetrators from prosecution.

Yes, two Republican presidential candidates have shown some real courage here, and they have opposed the trend. Ron Paul was right: This business about "enhanced interrogation techniques" is just so much newspeak for torture. Yet he and John McCain are going strongly against the prevailing opinion of the party: They no more make the Republicans anti-torture than Giuliani makes the Republicans pro-choice.

To be perfectly clear, the techniques we are discussing have included waterboarding, mock executions, forced violation of religious beliefs, induced hypothermia, sexual humiliation, beatings, and rape. Prisoners have been electrocuted, covered in excrement, urinated on, and dragged by the genitals.

But, this same Republican president assures us, we do not torture. In chilling euphemisms, the Republicans rush to agree -- and yet, also, they rush to insist that the policies of the past few years will continue.

Not the party of torture? How much more would it take?

I fear that Jason is right, and that the modern GOP has dumbed conservatism down to "willingness to do whatever it takes to inflict the greatest amount of pain on our enemies, regardless of legality, morality, or precedent." McCain and Paul are in the right here, and public opinion backs them overwhelmingly. Too bad they're likely to suffer for it in the primaries.

The US does not practice torture at Gitmo. If you want some examples of actual torture, go to my blog at napoleon15.blogspot.com Suffice it to say, sleep deprivation and other methods of interrogation practiced at Gitmo do not constitute torture.

Sleep deprivation isn't torture? Solzhenitsyn disagreed. He thought it was the worst of all the tortures the Soviets employed.

napoleon15, would you be willing to submit to a week or two of sleep deprivation and report back to us?

I'd generally been hopefull about Romney, but his stance on torture is discouraging. Romney and Giuliani sound like posturing teenage boys here, trying to one-up each other on how tough they can be.

It's unfortunate that American culture happens to have a rather large pro-violence component, and such knee-jerk reaction comments ring true to many people who enjoy action movies and the show "24."

napoleon15

The British and Northern Ireland used sleep deprivation as part of their "interrogation technique" against people suspected of being members of the IRA in the early 1970s.

When Parliament and the British public found out about it, they freaked. There was a gov't inquiry and the report found sleep deprivation to be illegal under domestic law. UK security forces are prohibited from employing it to this day.

In 1978, the Irish gov't took a case to the European Court of Human Rightson behalf of the men who suffered sleep deprivation at the hands of the Brits and the Royal Ulster Constabulary. The Court ruled that sleep deprivation "did not occasion suffering of the particular intensity and cruelty implied by the word torture ... [but] amounted to a practice of inhuman and degrading treatment," which was in breach of the European Convention on Human Rights.

I hope you're proud.

I hate to join in the chorus, but to suggest that sleep deprivation is not torture is an abuse of plain English. Sleep deprivation is not a kinder-gentler form of 'rendition' invented to supplant real torture by civilized Americans. It has been practiced by every foul horde and fascist warmonger in history. Mohammed's successors routinely used it against political enemies before executing them. Perhaps I suffer from a misplaced faith in my country, but Americans hate torture because it stinks not only of barbarism but stinks of desperation and incipient defeat. We don't need to torture to win. We are better. And you, "Napoleon" (nice choice of pseudonym), like all would-be fascists and the cowardly enemies we face, are obviously a loser.

Sigh, it's hard to argue with that Jason. Perhaps I'm seeing the glass half full when it's really 3/4 empty.

Sleep deprivation would be very merciful indeed compared to having one's head sawed off with a dull knife by al-Qaida thugs, or having air bubbles injected into one's blood stream by Japanese torturers, or being placed in a vacuum by Nazis.

"Sleep deprivation would be very merciful indeed compared to having one's head sawed off with a dull knife by al-Qaida thugs, or having air bubbles injected into one's blood stream by Japanese torturers, or being placed in a vacuum by Nazis."

Oh yea? Well those aren't torture either. Torture is being covered in honey and buried in an nest of hungry fire ants, but you're purposely kept somewhat alive for days and days while they eat you alive. Genitalia first. Tripping on bad acid.

Seriously, the question isn't whether there's worse torture, it's is sleep deprivation torture? I notice you didn't take Foltz up on his suggestion above.