If John McCain were imprisoned at Gitmo. . . .

A big +1 to everything Lovemyway said.

Also,

This is such a false dichotomy. It is very much in the United States' best interest to be well-liked by the rest of the world. A well-liked United States is an awful lot less likely to inspire people to blow themselves up in an effort to kill Americans.

More importantly, if the United States were well-liked internationally it would go a long way toward delegitimizing radicals and terrorists. If the U.S. were no longer despised and thought to be a more or less "deserving" target, Al-Qaeda and their ilk would have a much harder time trying to convince anyone that they are in any way brave or admirable for "standing up to America," and would be seen as nothing more than the fanatical sociopaths they are. That shift in perception would go a long way towards enboldening moderates the world over to forcefully condemn terrorism - and Islamic governments to take action against radicals - without needing to worry about being condemned as "American lapdogs," "Western stooges," or "un-Islamic."

Oderint dum metuant may have worked for Caligula, but it hasn't worked out so well for the United States. Wake up.

You're right. Bush did change how the U.S. deals with terrorists. Through Bush's actions, there are now more terrorist attacks than ever before, their recruitment is up, they have more sympathy than ever before, and the U.S. is less able to deal with them because we are focused on not allowing granny to bring knitting needles onto planes.

One attack got through. Just one. But more than twice the number of U.S. citizens have died because of Bush's reaction to that attack than died IN the attack. The US is not safer because of Bush.

Stop pretending to be intelligent. You aren't fooling anyone.

I paid good money for this bullshit detector. Please don't burn it out on a single post, OK?

(Emphasis mine.)

No, he's totally right, man. It was just a couple of bad apples and it was all on one fateful night.

Exactly.

That's very easy for you to say sitting in front of your computer. Maybe the chair you're using is hurting that back of your's, so you can claim some slight comparison to torture. I know I can. Listening to your unabashed Right-Wing looney rhetoric is torture all by its lonesome.

And the fact that you support Waterboarding is unconscionable. How about you try it in a controlled environment (or better yet, uncontrolled), see how you like it, then get back to me on how much you support it, because its very easy to support torture and play down prison camps when you have never laid eyes on one, stepped foot in one, or have even heard a fraction of the horror stories come out of one.

But, yeah, you're totally right and stuff.

The acts in Abu Ghraib did not occur in one night, they were repeated over time. .