Torture is NOT a "legal" issue (it's a moral issue)

Most of the arguments that were made to defend the use of torture techniques by American military and intelligence agency personnel centered around the "legality" of those techniques.

First of all, that was a classic "red herring."  It was a diversionary tactic, intended to divert attention from the fact that the use of torture is, has always been, and always will be a moral issue, not a legal one.  Those who ordered the use of torture against suspected islamists in secret CIA prison camps covered their legal asses very well ... completely, I'm sure.  I'm not interested in their legal arguments at all ... they are not relevant to the issue as it concerns us, the American people.  And the morality of torture is all that should concern us.

I was concerned only with the honor of the American people; and with the American nation.  And that honor was what was violated by the use of torture ... not merely international law or treaty law.

In short and in summary ... Americans shamed themselves by their defense of this practice.

I am proud that I refused to stoop to that moral low place.

The high ground that was given up has not been recovered.  It is unrecoverable.  And it is the loss of that moral high ground that has been most damaging to the US and to the security of the American nation ... not the revelations that Americans are "torturers."  

Again, I'd like to say that when Americans, as a people, defended the torture of helpless prisoners, detentions without legal recourse or any evidence of wrong-doing, and armed attacks on weaker, unarmed and defenseless nations that had done nothing to deserve those attacks, Americans did not violate any law, or even the rights of others.  Americans violated the very most basic American principles of justice. Americans violated their own principles. Those were my principles, and I hope they were yours.  I was brutalized.  So were you.

Americans made an evil choice: to trade something precious (that which makes America what it is) for mere promises of a little bit of extra promised security.

In sanctioning torture, Americans chose badly.

I'm sure, though, that the United States will never provide cluster munitions to anyone they know will use those weapons.

What does propaganda look like?

A few years ago, I worked on a project for the Canadian federal government. In our project space, we were surrounded by propaganda posters .. one morning I was staring at this one from Veteran Affairs Canada, and quipped to my coworkers, "I want to die in a war, Grandpa, just like Daddy!"

Holy crap... my co-workers did not think that was the least bit funny. I argued (unsuccessfully) that it was a propaganda poster. 

But that poster was propaganda ... emotionally evocative. Crafted for political manipulation.