The answer?  No.  But the behavior of the get-Bush-at-all costs press over the last eight years begs the question, doesn't it.  If this is confusing to you, then you haven't been paying attention to the U.S. press and their efforts to undermine U.S. policy and intelligence efforts over the last six years.  We had the New York Times disclosing U.S. monitoring of financial surveillance of terrorist activities, making a civil rights fiasco over the use of monitoring of cell phone calls between the U.S. and terrorist nations, and their notorious inflation of the abuses at Abu Ghraib to roughly the equivalent of the Tienemen Square massacre. 

I'm actually quite certain that Abu Ghraib got more media attention than anything the Chinese Communists have ever done.  It would be interesting to see which got more media attention in the U.S.  The slaughter of 40+ million people in China after the rise of Mao (a liberal sweetheart) or Abu Ghraib.  Comparatively speaking I'm quite confident that Abu Ghraib was much more of an atrocity in the view of the American press than Mao's slaughters in China. 

Now what happened at Abu Ghraib?  How many people died there?  How many had their heads cut off?  How many were executed in a back room?  This is the type of depiction you hear:  "in scenes of horrifying humiliation and abuse".  What about death?  Granted, the U.S. soldiers there were unhooked from all sense.  And why?  Were their fellow soldiers being kidnapped and beheaded?  Yes.  Were they uncovering the real torture chambers where people were actually raped and dismembered?  Yes.  So in the face of the real torture and murder they were subject to, if captured, and with a need to collect information about soldiers who were under threat of being beheaded, these soldiers broke the rules and the U.S. press had one its most glowing experiences in memory.  The press was like college kids on spring break on a Florida beach.  Exultant.  They were able to depict the U.S. soldiers as the true "evil doers" and make President Bush look bad in the process.  Mission Accomplished U.S. Press.  Well done.  They weren't so worried about the U.S. image in the world back then as long as it made Bush look really naughty.  The cries rose up.  "Impeach Bush! Impeach Bush! Bush is Hitler!"  Good times for the lefties in America.

But now that we have a new President that the left has adopted as their tribute to affirmative action, we'll see if the conservative press will actually try to undermine U.S. policy, security and intelligence, like their left-wing colleagues did.  I doubt it.  And no, saying you disagree with disastrous economic policy is not undermining U.S. security and intelligence.  It's called being sensible.

All right! I give in! Please stop! I'll tell you anything you want! AAAAAAaaaaaagggh!  I'll do anything you say as long as you stop telling me that water boarding and sleep deprivation are torture. 

Oh Boy.  This is an issue that is so full of stupidity, hypocrisy and illogic that it's really hard to comprehend to me that we've been, and keep being, subjected to it.  It's like the left's version of the (dare I say it) Chinese Water Torture.  Now that's torture. It's even in the name.  Torture.  You drip water on someone's forehead just one drop at a time until they break.  Fiendish.  Diabolical. 

So, for four years now the left in the U.S. and Europe has been complaining about U.S. torture methods.  How America has lost its way because it tortured and has no credibility in the world.  And that the world all hates us now because of what we did.  So, now that B.O. is busy transforming our image as a cowboy nation to a nation of leftist-dupes-for-dictators (LDFD) how is our government building our nation's image up?  By releasing all the details about the torture.  So, on one hand they want us to have a good image, but only after they try to rub our image in the dirt again in order to try to gin up prison sentences for Bush administration people.  Then they'll get back to repairing our image. 

One problem.  Now we have the memos.  Now, let me get this straight.  All this hubbub about torture came down to water boarding 3 people.  Uhhh, am I the only one who sees this as an affront to human existence?  We have been subjected to these inane, idiotic, preachy, sophomoric, Janene Gorofolo-esque, ludicrous, inconceivable, bombastic, fervent, teary-eyed, condescending, and just plain stupid lectures about a decline in American values from a list of people ranging from B.O. and Hillary to Susan Serandon to Pamela Anderson and Sean Penn for four years now and we've debated this and wasted untold money and air time on this issue and it turns out this was over water boarding three killers?  Please someone tell me this isn't true.  Please tell me our liberal society hasn't deteriorated into this level of insanity.  Where's the lawsuit for the cost of life spent on this.  I'm going to make a statement here and it's going to sound sarcastic and more comical than serious, but I really, sincerely mean it.  We have been subjected to more of a crime by the debate than the victims of the  torture were subjected to, and at a tremendously higher order of magnitude. 

We were told, "We are not that kind of nation that would do something like this."  "We as Americans are above this."  "It's better for thousands to die than for one man to suffer from sleep deprivation."  And yes, they're right.  That's who we've become.  That's who we are.  And I am so embarrassed to belong to such a sad, perverted society where this type of thinking could hold sway.  It's better to let thousands of people die than to allow someone to put a caterpillar in a cell with a killer.  That's who we are.  That's what the left's political correctness (insanity) has led us to and, yes, I feel like I've been tortured much more than any of these detainees.  So, please stop.  I give in.  I can't take it.  I'll do anything, except admit that this was, actually, torture or that it wasn't necessary and well done.  And now we know that it helped avoid a 9/11-type attack on Los Angeles and they are still pressing on with the same lame arguments. 

I heard something very smart from Dennis Prager today.  The left thinks conservatives aren't nuanced.  We see things in black and white.  Examples: Castro is evil.  The unborn should be protected.  Terrorists aren't justified by their poverty.  But the left is much more black and white in most respects other than diplomacy.  For example: No one should own their own gun.  Government healthcare solves all problems.  Gay people have a right to be married.  And YES - Any kind of tough treatment with detainees is torture.  Now, I've built on Prager's key thought here, but anyone who thinks that interrogation of detainees doesn't have levels of harshness and that the dreaded caterpillar method should be compared to a real torturer's method of cutting fingers off or killing a loved one in front of you is seeing things in black and white.  And more specifically, they're are running amok with an important issue in order to score cheap political points at the cost of things much more important.  That's the left in America today.  Heaven help us.

1. Mr. Jefferson is lauded as the author of the Declaration of Independence.  He drafted this, but his first version was quite a bit nuttier than what Adams and the others left us with - because Jefferson had some pretty bizarre perspectives.  His assignment as author was a slight to him because at the time that job was viewed as the least important job the founders of this fledgling democracy had on their agenda.  He was assigned this not because of his eminence but because of his lack thereof and because he was to mousy to speak in public and could be eloquent with a pen.  True, this document proved to be much more important than his contemporaries anticipated.  It has become a source document for democracy in the history of the world.  However, Jefferson borrowed heavily from British/Scottish political philosophers in the concepts included in the DoI and nobody ever notes that.  So, Jefferson was a bit of a plagiarizer and that goes unnoticed.  He was also guided and probably edited heavily by John Adams - a leader of much greater stature, though largely relegated to the graveyard of historian-appointed dismissal. 

2. Mr. Jefferson wrote the Declation of Independence.  Let's just suppose the DoI was not accompanied by the War for Independence as fought by courageous men like Washington and Hamilton.  Americans would possibly still be English subjects today.  Mr. Jefferson's great document would have disappeared from history as insignificant and un-noteworthy.  So, who do we owe more to?  Jefferson or Washington?  The interesting point here is that as Governor of Virginia - the then most-populated state in America - Mr. Jefferson never took a stand in the Revolutionary War by calling out the state militia.  He parked his state on the side lines and hid out personally at Monticello until the British made him flee on horseback.  He was Bill Clinton in essence.  All theory and no action.  So how great is a Declaration without the will and courage to stand behind it.  Mr. Jefferson did not have the will, wisdom or courage.