On torture: I remember back in 2004, during the convention speech thinking, "He should be running."

I was under the impression that he was different. Instead of being a stand-in for Herman Munster, he was dynamic, fluid, and inspirational. I voted for Kerry, but I wished all along that it was really Obama. Is he different? Or is he is just better at doing the same damn thing most politicians seem to be good at?

I could forgive him for so many other things, but not torture. So many years later, I think I regret wanting him to be president. Maybe another Democrat would have had the guts to go after Bush.

To our knowledge, rendition has stopped, torture has stopped, and will never continue as long as he's president. This means to me that Obama knows torture is wrong and not effective. If he knows that, then that means the reasons the Bush gang gave for doing it are null and void. There's no reason aside from political calculation not to prosecute. Prosecution of a US president for such horrible things would be a precedent in and of itself. It might be dangerous and open the doors to dangerous things.

What's the precedent if we don't? Isn't it just as dangerous?

What happens when the nation goes back to Republican hands? What happens then? What has he done to prevent the precedent of torture from carrying forward? What will keep another president from the doing the same damn thing Bush did? I see nothing.

Bush will get off for what he did. That will tell future presidents that they can do the same thing, and there will be no consequences. Maybe they won't use it on scary foreigners, but scary Americans. And how long until scary Americans become left wing Americans, especially if the people who tend to support torture are right wing?

What is this nation and this President doing when we ignore torture?

It's not as if this nation hasn't done horrible things, just look at Jim Crow, the firebombing of Tokyo, Dresden, the nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Japanese internment camps, slavery, and the massacre of Native Americans. Don't forget all the proxy wars we fought, and the number of governments we've overthrown. It isn't as if this is our nation's first moral transgression, and the people involved may be some of the least sympathetic figures alive, but it shows more about us than it does them. The extremists opposing this nation may do horrible things, but we must be better than they are. We must live with higher moral standards, because the only thing that separates us and makes us any better is the higher moral standard. When we do things like torture it lowers us to their level, and destroys one of the things this nation is supposed to be about: the rule of just law.

Political expediency, that's all it is. If the people who oppose his prosecution do horrible things to us in return for ensuring his prosecution, at least we will know that we tried our best.

We haven't tried our best yet to ensure the rule of law. As of right now, the presidency is unchecked, it can do anything as an institution. We live only at the whim of a man and his men, not the laws. We shouldn't have to have a Democrat in power in order for there not to be torture. It should be a universally unacceptable thing.

I don't think it is.

Don't throw basic human decency under the bus.

I'm not as sure as you are that abuse has stopped and, Leon Panetta said publicly at his confirmation hearing that he would continue to use rendition as a tool.

:shrug:

I was talking about the torture stuff, which in my opinion is the most important.

rendition did not just start under Bush, right? The righties were complaining about rendition and torture while Clinton was President and Gore was VP. Didn't start with them either.

So, on an issue where most Americans hold a 24/Jack B. kind of mindset, just how far back are you willing to go in order to protect you're view of 'basic human decency?'