Torture is Wrong. Period.

There is an H-bomb hidden in New York. It is going off in 12 hours. One of the terrorists is caught. The terrorist has a terrible aversion to nails on the chalk board. The FBI sets up 118 chalkboards and conducts a symphony of screeching. Terrorist confesses. Bomb found and dismantled.

All blanket statements are wrong!

The accomplishment of ANY desired end - no matter how laudable - is NEVER justified when the means employed to accomplish that end are questionable at best. I am a christian and I am sickened to learn, according to a recent Pew Research Poll, that there are many American christians who apparently deem the use of torture appropriate in some instances. It is the torturer who loses his/her own soul and it is an indictment of any society that supports its use as an instrument of public policy. This president has got it exactly right: the use of torture has a corrosive effect on the soul of a nation. Democracy is frequently a messy and inconvenient enterprise. But Lincoln was exactly right, for all time and forever, when he said: " Let us strive to learn that it is right that makes for might." God help us all, if we succumb to the temptation to take some convenient "short cuts" in the search for the "evil doers" and attempts to bring them before the bar of justice. For in the doing, we will have become just like them! The moral high ground is the only viable position for us to take as a nation, seeing as how we have been crowing about our own exceptionalism for a very long time.

Hberger - you may be right about the feeling; but just because we feel vindicated in the moment still does not make it right. It may explain the action but still not condone it.
As for OJ? What about those of us - even white people who feel that he might just gasp - be innocent of the killing? I remember watching and thinking - he killed 2 people and no one screamed or anything? He killed his exwife with his children in the house? I just don't think he had the time to do it. Whatever happened to thinking that perhaps he "just didn't do it?" I didn't see it as vindication for black people; but as justice served. He may have participated in it - he may have masterminded it but the burden of proof was on the prosecution and with the planting of evidence - they failed.
Saddam Hussein was a cruel man, a tyrant to be sure, but he kept Al Queda in check and not one of the 9/11 Hijackers was an Iraq citizen.
If you believe that torture is inherently wrong and you believe that what the white people did to the African Americans was wrong then how can you condone torture even as an act of revenge?

Using The Golden Rule, one of the best way to separate right from wrong, torture is wrong as you don't want to be tortured.
Using The Golden Rule, abortion of a non-viable fetus is not wrong because the non-viable fetus's brain is not developed yet to suffer.

Upon first learning of the torture tactics our country has used I felt a tinge of relief and justice for the victims of hateful crimes such as 911. I remembered the sickness I felt in my stomach and the sadness in my heart back in the 90's when Saddam purposely set oil fields on fire and ordered the slaughter of his own people. And even today as I got ready for work while listening to the latest fatalities of the swine flu, I wondered whether this is just another act of terrorism. The possible reality of that question again makes me feel a sense of relief and justification for torture tactics. Its sort of like how most African-Americans felt the day OJ was vindicated. Even after what appeared to be insurmountable amounts of evidence against him. Somehow his "getting away with murder" made us feel a sense of relief and justification for the many years of oppression this nation has handed us. Oj's getting away with murder did not undue years of slavery and oppression. But it did, at least briefly, allow some of us to feel a slight bit of a reprieve from racism at the hands of an unjust judicial system. Years and years of hanging nooses from trees vs. 1 dead white couple, it seemed a fair tradeoff...we felt good in that moment. It’s the same situation with torturing prisoners of war. The tactic rarely produces results but it makes one feel good in the moment. It gives a false illusion of power in situations where we are experiencing complete and total powerlessness. The lives lost in the OJ murder did not provide liberation for African-Americans but it made some feel as though at least one person was able to get away with the same practices that white people have been doing to blacks for years. In my opinion, Bush giving the green light for military personnel to torture was merely his reaction to complete and utter powerlessness. Most won't want to admit it but revenge, no matter how purposeless, feels good in the moment.

"How can a person be against abortion and for torture?"

As the abortion rights people often say, "You can be against abortion and not have one."

There is a difference between what one sees as a moral position for oneself and what they demand get codified into law for everyone else.

As for myself, please don't let that buxom woman in a tight blouse question me, one of techniques that some people wanted to fit under the category of torture.

Torture is a pretext to unleash our shadow and indulge in abject crime.