The Bush/Cheney organization seems to have had a great deal of difficulty distinguishing between real life and the fictional world Jack Bauer 24. The latter may be entertaining, but the world doesn't work that way.

I think the argument* that "these declassified memos don't specify whether he spilled the beans before or after being tortured" is an unsatisfactory argument. For one thing, it leaves entirely open the possibility that he spilled the beans only after being tortured. But for another and bigger thing, it plays straight into the Bush-Cheney belief that a government policy legalizing torture could be justified if it could be shown to produce valuable intelligence.

To that I say "hogwash." A government policy legalizing torture is a line I do not want my government to cross.

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* I recognize that this is not the only argument made in the article.

Hear, hear. Part of the price I pay for freedom is living in a nation that doesn't resort to torture, murder, rape, secret prisons, assassination etc. in the name of national security.

Let those in cowardly, bullying nations resort to such tactics. I am brave enough to face the dangerous world we live in without becoming like the worst of it. Are you?