Not Your Sweetie

DU - gratuituous

Note the timing of these "memos," because it tells you something very important: Late 2001, early 2002. At that time, it was the intention and soon to become the policy of the Bush administration to use extra-legal methods, up to and including torture, against anyone captured or detained by the United States.
First the question gets batted around: Should we abjure the use of torture in every circumstance? Well, what about {insert urgent scenario here}. Or what if it was your daughter buried alive, and the scumbag on the other side of the table knew where she was?
The scenarios get more and more desperate, more and more Hollywood style. Torture passes from the unthinkable to the thinkable, which is half the battle. Then, it passes from the thinkable to the doable, the stage at which the reprehensible Professor Yoo and Mr. Delahunty write their little memos.
Over the months, the memos are circulated and discussed. Torture as a method goes from thinkable to doable, and finally to where these bastards wanted it all along: The imperative. We must torture the people we capture, or else we fail our sacred mission to maintain security.
And that torture (or "abuse") is not merely imperative, but is morally imperative: We can't take the chance that someone in custody might have valuable information that could save soldiers' lives. How could we face the American people if they knew that we had hold of the mastermind behind some unspeakable atrocity, and hadn't done everything we could to find out what he was planning, and tried to stop it? Of course {lip service duly paid to civil rights and basic humanity} we don't want to torture or abuse anyone, but the people of Iraq, by being brutalized by the Saddam regime for so long, can't be trusted to respect humanity the way we do. They must suffer so that our people are not in danger.
These criminals that have seized control of our country must be stopped.