Meet the new torture, same as the old torture

A few items are floating around the b'sphere today on our country's disturbing embrace of torture (euphemistically referred to as "enhanced interrogation techniques").

These are particularly apt given the Republican candidates' embrace of torture (so long as it is given a euphemistic name):

[Brit] Hume [asked] the candidates . . . How aggressively would you interrogate" . . . captured suspects?

Rudy Giuliani — . . . "I'd say every method they could think of," affirmed Giuliani.

Mitt Romney . . . "Enhanced interrogation techniques have to be used."

First, Andrew "Fifth Columnist" Sullivan notes some uncomfortable similiarities between the enhanced interrogation techniques being employed under order of President Bush, and those permitted by the Third Reich. For example, both regimes used the phrase "enhanced interrogation techniques" to describe their torture that is not torture, and both used many of the same techniques--techniques labeled as torture following the war, and for which Nazis were executed.

Second, reactions to a lecture, "Legal Policy in a Twilight War," delivered by Philip Zelikow, Executive Director of the 9/11 Commission, and former advisor to the Secretary of State, can be found here.