If we electrocute someone without quite killing them, is that torture, or is it just robust interrogation? How about letting them dangle on a rope by the neck but cutting them down before they die? Is that okay? Sounds like nothing but a little robust air deprivation. How about putting them in an oven and turning it off just before their clothes catch fire? Robust heat motivation. Beatings? Robust corporal persuasion. Rendition? Why, that’s nothing but the outsourcing of robust discomfort delivery.

You cannot change facts or make a policy legitimate by using whitewashed language.

What is there to debate about waterboarding? It feels like drowning. Can anyone argue that putting someone through a virtual death experience is not torture? If it isn’t torture, then what is it?

A nation with a 43.5 billion dollar intelligence budget can surely cough up a few bucks to find effective ways to glean vital intelligence by legal means that are consistent with our national character and our founding principles.

America has survived because of our belief in humanitarian principles reinforced by the rule of law. This has stabilized our civil liberties, our economic system, our political system, and yes–the security of our homeland.

Autocratic rule is not compatible with the rule of law. We are history’s greatest hope and example of functional democracy. The Mukasey appointment, fairly or not, signals that America may be willing to compromise and split hairs over principles we have shed so much blood to establish here and in other parts of the world.

Sadistic shortcuts such as waterboarding would have the effect of normalizing and legitimizing all forms of torture. They would be used against us in future wars–with no consequences for the perpetrators and no recourse for the victims. If the United States of America ever abandons all standards, there eventually will be no standards anywhere.

No American citizen or soldier will ever be safe if we establish a precedent that allows faceless, unaccountable persons to take away all civil liberties from any suspect just by slapping the “terrorist” label on them.

Even in wartime, we have to set limits for ourselves strict enough that we can live with some of the inevitable–and occasionally necessary–excesses. But if torture becomes accepted practice in the world’s greatest democratic superpower, all in the name of protecting democracy, what democracy will there be left to protect?