It seems that everyone is doing back flip to rationalize these guys behavior.. But none of these assumptions make a bit of sense. If this was all due to the supposed crisis atmosphere how come it wasn't ended soon after, especially when no information was forthcoming. If they all had the “best intentions” why all the secrecy and backpedaling.

A much more obvious answer is that this administration loved abusing its power, and that included the idea of physically torturing its enemies for the pure enjoyment of it. Its hardly a reach to say that the same mindset that can ignore New Orleans during Katrina and sleeps through all the bombings in Baghdad can certainly institute torture just to see their “enemies” in pain.

Doug: You are absolutely correct in that no one normal civilian should be trying to rationalize that which the federal government does and the average citizen does not and or can not understand.

Torture of POWs has been going on for centuries and it is only recently that the average citizen has been made aware the our country is no different. Additionally we are engaged in a war with a enemy the likes or which we have never met before. An enemy who does not want to just defeat us in a war, does not simply want to invade and take over our country, but an enemy who wants to and will not stop until they have destroyed every single person in America who does not live and believe as they do.

You see Doug; the single biggest problem we face here is that thanks to the press, the average American now knows far to much and is afraid. They are afraid that if we continue to "torture" these poor defenseless terrorist "enemy combatants" (I believe that is the politically correct term now) their friends will get mad at us and retaliate. Our countries views of terrorists is caught in what I like to call the "pendulum effect." Starting with 9/11 (actually the terrorist attacks started long before that but our past POTUSs took little to no action) Americans were up in arms and the battle cry rang throughout the land "attack and destroy terrorism." POTUS Bush told Americans that night that it was not going to be easy, fast or inexpensive. but few really understood that he spoke the truth (at that time and place at least). Now nearly 7 years later with rising fuel prices and the decline or our dollar and 4000 plus American soldiers dead and many other maimed, We must place the blame for all this on someone so why not POTUS Bush. Now the pendulum has swung from the extreme right to the far left. The reason is actually a simple yet frightening one; we Americans have become complacent because since invading Afghanistan and Iraq we have not received a terrorist attack on U.S. soil again, therefore the war in Iraq is now a big mistake and we should not be there. Doug: I don't know your feelings on the war in Iraq but please indulge me and allow me to give you my version. (1) We should never have invaded Iraq. We were supposed to have been going after Osama Bin Laden and his merry gang of terrorists and we knew they were in Afghanistan not Iraq. We allegedly knew that when he fled Afghanistan he went to Pakistan and not Iraq so why in the hell did we invade Iraq in the first place? (2) Ok the doors is open and the horse is out of the barn and we have invaded Iraq. A relatively short invasion and then we really messed up. We should not have stopped until we swept the entire country, every house out building, hole in the ground and cave and confiscated all weapons or weapon building machinery and supplies and secured the borders. From that point on declare martial law and any one caught where they should not be or with a weapon of any kind, shot on sight. In short let the military handle the war and keep the politicians out of it. Then once the country is truly secure, slowly turn the country back over to the Iraqi people with the understanding that they get our protection from invasion and we get their oil at cost plus a "reasonable" profit. A reasonable profit to me would be say it cost them $20 U.S. dollars a barrel to pump the oil we buy it at say $50 a barrel and they only sell to this country for the next 100 years.

Doug: Believe me when I say that we don't torture the enemy just for the fun of it. We do so because force, a force greater than their own, is the only thing these people understand. As long as we have bleeding heart liberals who are convicting our soldiers for things like not handling the "Koran" properly or making the Radical Muslim prisoners disrobe then pointing at them and laughing or worse yet shooting a civilian who refused to obey an order to show his hands, we can not and will not stand a chance or controlling terrorism. Note I did not say win the way on terrorism; even a country as powerful as the United States can not do this alone. It will take a world wide joint effort for this to happen and sadly at this time our world is far to liberal to take on the terrorists and win, so all we can hope to do is control them and keep them out of the U.S.

I am not advocating the outright murder or maiming of innocent men, woman and children in terrorist countries. but rather using whatever means necessary to keep the terrorists out of our country. If the average American finds these means too shocking then we don't have the need to know what means our government is using to keep us safe, just be satisfied if their efforts are working and we go on enjoying our freedom and way of life.

Doug: Just for the record I am a registered NON PARTISAN voter and as such I do not care if a Democrat or Republican is our next POTUS. I see problems with both Obama and McCain and the ONLY reason I support McCain is that I am old school and believe that "blood is thicker than water" and as such do not trust Obama. Additionally Obama's is "LIBERAL" even by Democrat standards and lacks life, political and military experience that McCain possess. In short I do not feel we need our next POTUS to have questionable family ties, and have to go through on the job training as a politician and Commander in Chief of our Armed Forces. For these reasons alone I support McCain at this time.