that does what it takes to protect the USA & the

people of it. I'm ashamed of my government that

is running our country down that words can not

say it all. All God , and a turn around is the

only thing that will save us from becoming the

worse country in the world. God Help Us

Torture is a way to extract something, but not necessarily truth.

Waterboarding? Beyond the post WWII war crimes trials, the U.S. Army has even court-martialed it's own for this practice. In January 1968, a photo appeared in a U.S. newpaper showing an American soldier supervising the waterboarding of a North Vietnamese soldier. The photo led to an investigation, and the soldier was court-martialed 2 months later. It was torture then, and it's torture now. The flag it's conducted under, or any sense of "imminent danger" does not make it less criminal.

In the recent debacle following the attacks of 9/11, we allowed people who had no knowledge or experience with interrogations "develop" protocols based on techniques that our adversaries used to extract false confessions from captured U.S. military personnel. If the techniques were used to force our people to tell untruths, why in the name of all that is holy would we expect that those same techniques would extract truth from anyone? And if by chance they did yield truth, how would we tell the difference between the truth and a lie that was told just to make the pain stop?

I'm personally on the fence regarding the culpability of the interrogators who followed the criminal rules they were given. On the other hand, those who went beyond those rules are clearly guilty of crimes. What galls me is that we're still only looking into the actions of the "Lindy England's." If we still had the integrity of the nation that went to war against Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, we would look into those who crafted the rules and those who approved them, and we would hold them to criminal account for their actions – all the way up to and including the former Commander-In-Chief.

And yes, our party is out of power but with Obama’s poll numbers dropping everyday I suspect the big switch will start occurring in the 2010 elections and your party will be out of power for a good long time after the mess this president is creating.

– You owe an apology to every commenter on this blog for, 1) forgetting that foreign terrorists attacked us on our own soil on 9/11 2001, and then only did we exercise our perfect right to "visit" their bases in Afghanistan to root them out, and 2) for forgetting that in Afghanistan our men were then attacked by informal and illegal enemy combatants who, except for their murderous designs upon us equivalent to the terrorists', had no reason whatever to engage us in combat, and 3)for equating this with the murderous Nazi terror visited by a whole country bent upon exterminating its neighbors — as well as several 100,000 of its own citizens who had the "wrong religion".

–Not only is your comment an insult to every American, it is an insult of particular gravity to the memory of all those who have so far perished in this war on terror, not to mention an almost irreparable insult to their friends and family left grieving their loss. You owe them even more than an apology!

–I think you also owe HF an apology for having abused their generously extended freedom to comment in order to "publish" your despicable drivel. Nowhere but in America would you have had such freedom and opportunity. Shame on you!

–For myself, I wish you found yourself suddenly in Afghanistan or Iran instead of safe Somerville, and learned first hand their form of response to those who smear their patriots. They do use, and quite freely and without any guilt, some methods which I'll wager would make our much maligned operatives look like altar boys. Strangely, most of us here would probably be ready to risk our lives to rescue you, just because you're a fellow American. I can understand that, yet I would wonder what for! You may quote me!