From past encounters with Mark Shea, my take is he is impossible to reason with on the subject of torture. You can't even discuss with him the subject of just what torture is. (For example, are loud music, cold rooms, being shouted at, and being kept awake torture? If so then I was regularly subjected to torture in my twenties at every rock concert I went to...) Anyway, my past experience is, he just blasts away at anyone who doesn't agree with his beliefs. Not the church's -- I'm pretty sure (even if I'm not Catholic) that the church's stand against torture doesn't mean we need to treat prisoners of war like tender babies.

But even asking the question of are we so sure that the antiwar left's claims about torture the Bush administration approved are true got a response that was nearly hysterical, as if Shea was screaming so he couldn't hear anything to contradict his own thoughts. It's useless to talk to anyone in that mood, so even though I agree with Shea on a lot of other subjects and think he can be a witty writer I just stopped visiting his site.

Same here. I've quoted him on this blog, [link, link, link] but not for a long time.

I'd say people don't react like him unless they are afraid. Afraid of something being opened-up and examined, like the proverbial can of worms.

I'd make a guess that like a lot of Catholics, he is culturally and tribally liberal Democrat, and desperately unwilling to see that the Democrat Party has become has become the party of death, and the party of nihilism and opposition to God.

So he seizes on any "wrong-doing" by Republicans in panic.

American policy of POWs is so inconsistent. It is either coddling them or doing non-traditional things to them (eg total sensory deprivation like Padilla).

What exactly does the phrase 'Enhanced interrogation ' mean?

It must be my clumsy way of putting it but I didnt mean to suggest that America should be above Prudence. The Catholic States of old (like Spainish Empire) did not always conduct themselves with strict following to Church's moral teaching. I mean America maybe should hold itself to a higher moral standard than old European states.

Bisaal;

America maybe should hold itself to a higher moral standard than old European states.

And we do. You need to read more about how old European states acted if you honestly think there's a comparison. Contrast Iraq and, say, the Belgian Congo for an example.

Bisaal, you have to understand that they are not "prisoners of war." The Geneva Conventions award POW status and protections to those who follow the rules of war, which these guys don't.

This is a good example of the poor communications skills of the Bush Administration. They should have said loudly from the first that we have a perfect right to just shoot them on the battlefield, that these prisoners are war criminals and have no rights. Then our very humane treatment would have been seen as the good deed it is.

Our treatment of captives is inconsistent because we are groping with a new situation. The terrorists are not attached to any national government. They are in some respects like soldiers and in other ways like criminal gangs. We can't be sure who is really a terrorist, and we can't say when they will be released--the quasi-war we are in may drag on for decades and never clearly have an end-point...

And suppose on 11/26/2008 India had caught some people who seemed possibly to be assisting with the Mumbai attacks, though without hard evidence that could be used in court. What are you going to do with them?

Let them go and you may be responsible for future attacks. Detain them and you may be detaining the innocent. If you detain them for a while...then how long is "a while?" Is India "at war?" And if so, with who?

I suppose I shouldn't have used "prisoners of war" to describe the people captured in Afghanistan and Iraq, but "detainee" sounds so -- I don't know, dainty. How about "thuggee"? ;)

Seriously, I agree with the frustration with the Bush administration's communication problems on this matter. But our political class no longer produces people with the stones to say what's what, so we get clumsy things like "Department of Homeland Security" (gack) and "War on Terror" (up next: the War on Depression, the War on Angst, and the War on Post-Partum Psychosis!), and so on. What I wish, now, is that we hadn't carted those "detainees" all the way to Guantanamo. I understand the need to put them somewhere out of the way of the fighting so we can get at them, but now, thanks to Our Media Overlords and the morons who listen to them, Guantanamo is now known as a prison instead of as a naval base.

I don't think the Bush administration had communication problems. I think it's pretty clear the permanent government was not happy with the elected government and went to war. The press sided with the permanent government. Bush had some wonderful speeches, covered once at best. Even then, Bush might have been able to do something, if not for the endless moronic revolts from the "real conservatives". Never have I seen a group more willing to let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

We are not talking about legal or not but Moral in the sense of Catholic teachings.
So while US does have the legal right to shoot captured terrorists, but it wont be moral by Church.

Also the captured terrorists are not POWs by Geneva Convention, the same laws for their humane treatment applies by Church.

In India, the captive terrorists are generally being processsed through normal criminal courts. However special laws have been passed, then cancelled and then passed again, in some special areas.
The terrorist Azmal Guru that may or may not have been involved in the Attack on Indian Parliament in 2001 was sentanced to death but his various appeals are wending their ways through normal Indian criminal channels.

Indian criminal system is not very humane but I believe the captured terrorists are treated better
(being considered POWs in some sense, I believe).
But there exists no non-traditional tortures in India ie total sensory deprivation, sexual humilation etc.

Bisaal, I was going into the legal peculiarities of our situation to try to answer your question about why our policy seems inconsistent. But viewed purely as a Catholic moral question I think we are still going to be in much the same tricky situation. I don't think what the Bush Administration has done is inconsistent with morality.

Also, interrogation is not the normal day-to-day treatment of our detainees. Most of the time the most inhumane part of their condition is boredom.

Keep in mind that terrorist tactics are cynically designed to use our morality and humanity against us. And their goal is to destroy us and our morality.

I think the foremost moral question to ask is: How do we avoid being led along on a string by con men?

iObk02 cmmsbvikzjtb, [url=http://xuheuwlrftos.com/]xuheuwlrftos[/url], [link=http://nalbhxvjdpgp.com/]nalbhxvjdpgp[/link], http://mmpnajnemoec.com/

uAT4sR kesztoodzfje, [url=http://ofpewuhzxguy.com/]ofpewuhzxguy[/url], [link=http://fjyjjfdwhqhw.com/]fjyjjfdwhqhw[/link], http://sajnjagaxtwq.com/

aGRM2t wbulbaosodoe, [url=http://bhshawxjsvhr.com/]bhshawxjsvhr[/url], [link=http://aolxaawuopgc.com/]aolxaawuopgc[/link], http://ukbmoaxpxtny.com/