The initial outrage that I had has transformed to a slow, steady mourning.

That said, I'm glad we sent it to him to be vetoed. Future historians will not be kind to this man.

AP) Republican presidential candidate John McCain said President Bush should veto a measure that would bar the CIA from using waterboarding and other harsh interrogation methods on terror suspects.

McCain voted against the bill, which would restrict the CIA to using only the 19 interrogation techniques listed in the Army field manual. [which does not include waterboarding]

who said those medaevil torture devices should be put in the closet? i think not! consider the exciting new job possibilities:

GS-11, general torturer, some experience required, will train. some travel required. pay range: $55k - 65K. promotion potential to GS-13.

Look at what was happening here folks. The Congress (Legislative) was trying to pass a bill that would dictate how the CIA, an EXECUTIVE BRANCH OFFICE, would run.

Am I the only one here who sees this bill as the immense power grab that it was?

Secondly, let's put things into perspective here. No one is saying that the CIA will have free-reign to just galavant around and torture people on a whim. This is all about the CIA's ability to garner intelligence.

You lefties cry and whine that we invaded Iraq based on poor intel and then do everything in your power to prevent us the tools from gaining good intel.

Are you all so delusional as to believe that they "bad guys" will tell us what we want to know if we simply ask them nicely? What a lovely dream world to live in.

The reality of the matter is that these people believe that they have a mandate from god to murder us and if the only way we can obtain info to save lives is to torture a few murders then I have no problem with allowing that to happen.

You people need to wake up and realize that the Middle East did not just start hating us all of a sudden with Bush. It's been going back since before Carter (though he did a lot to help destroy Democracy there too!)

beating, electrocuting, burning, using dogs... stripping detainees [or] forcing them to perform or mimic sexual acts

I think I find this the most reprehensible part:

"The bill Congress sent me would take away one of the most valuable tools in the war on terror," Bush said in his weekly radio address... "This is no time for Congress to abandon practices that have a proven track record of keeping America safe."

Torture = tool. President Bush thinks of torture entirely in terms of its instrumentality. No means toward a desired end are too vicious, or unprofitable, to Republicans.

In fact, Bush's characterization of torture as tool conforms to one of the fundamental beliefs of conservatism and an underlying ideology that unites the political coalition of conservatism: Natural resources (big business), religious conversions (religious right), electoral votes (party strategists), and now information (national security) are all commodities - gifts of nature that their god intended to have extracted from the world by all practical means and to all desirable ends.

if bush thinks (and that would be a rare event in and of itself) congress is overreaching, let him say so. he didn't. instead, he made the usual unsupported claim that torture, already outlawed by the geneva conventions, has kept this country safe. fine, let him prove it.

Life in Lubbock, Texas, taught me two things: One is that God loves you and you're going to burn in hell. The other is that sex is the most awful, filthy thing on earth and you should save it for someone you love.