TORTURE

The evidence mounts that the Bush/Cheney White House has officially sanctioned the torture of prisoners at Guantanamo, despite warnings from the CIA that up to a third of the detainees might be have been imprisoned mistakenly.

Jane Mayer has a new book (The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How The War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals) coming out Tuesday which documents what our government has been doing in our name.

Stories from the New York Times and the Washington Post, a review from the Post, and more from The Daily Dish.

Back in February, John McCain sided with Bush in voting against a measure that would have banned the CIA from using waterboarding and other harsh tactics.

Torture produces unreliable evidence. Torture is immoral. Torture is the kind of behavior that most Americans associate with societies that we find abhorrent.

TORTURE IS WRONG.

George Moscone once said this about capital punishment:

My late father was a guard at San Quentin and who I was visiting one day, who showed to me and then explained the function of the death chamber. And it just seemed inconceivable to me, though I was pretty young at the time, that in this society that I had been trained to believe was the most effective and efficient of all societies, that the only way we could deal with violent crime would be to do the ultimate ourselves, and that's to governmentally sanction the taking of another person's life.

And it seems inconceivable to me that the United States of America would need to rely on torture to protect itself. People died to bring this nation into existence and to preserve its Union. Surely we can safeguard ourselves without destroying the ideals for which so many have sacrificed themselves. Surely we can remain free without teaching our children the lesson that Moscone rejected.

Surely we can preserve our lives without losing our humanity.