BUSH ADMITS CIA HAD SECRET PRISONS

[Preechr]

I actually did mean it that way. Well, that, and I wanted to make people look up a word. You weren't supposed to TELL THEM the definition, dammit!

I don't consider humanity a birthright. I can think like that and still believe we all possess "God-given" rights and freedoms because I believe it possible, common even, for people to give those rights and freedoms away or otherwise choose to have them stripped away through criminal and immoral actions. I don't consider our terrorist enemies to be human until they do something to regain that status in society. They lost their human status not just because we call them enemies, of course, but rather due to their choices and actions. They traded their humanity for an inhuman ideology... and I'm not talking about Islam.

I honestly do believe that this war will have an end. It's not going that bad so far. You're just jaded and cynical. This is the "end game" of Liberalism, and I'm just thankful I'm around when it's happening.

As for innocents, I agree that we should not torture them. I'm not advocating the mass torture of all Arabs or all Muslims or whatever, either. We won't have to. Just as were we to institute a policy that no prisoner will ever be tortured for any reason we would no longer be able to obtain ANY useful information, the policy that we have where our detainees don't know what we might do to them is pretty darn helpful, I'd imagine, when it comes to interrogation time.

They know we can lock them up forever and torture them if we wish. That's exactly as it should be. We have to have these options available to fight this war. Innocent folks might be shot in the head accidentally, but would you advocate taking away our soldiers guns, Max? War is not a fun and happy thing, but fighting a war with half-measures is exactly what causes "quagmires" like Vietnam. You like to refer to Iraq as a "quagmire like Vietnam," yet you champion the ideas that cause "quagmires like Vietnam." What's up with that? I wonder if your hatred for Dubya hasn't taken on a life of it's own, invading your subconscious and becoming a self-reinforcing, narcissistic pathology...