"I hope we can understand, my friends, that life is not 24 and Jack Bauer..."

Scott Horton and Andrew Sullivan comment...

"The moral clarity and vision of McCain’s answer was perfectly balanced by the bankruptcy of Romney’s. In the end, the former Massachusetts governor ducks by saying that he would turn to his ultimate guru for guidance: Cofer Black, the Vice Chair of Blackwater USA. Mr. Black is known for his bravado, including a pledge to the White House that he would send them Osama bin Laden’s head in a box packed with dry ice. But of course it was Mr. Black who failed in efforts to catch bin Laden and other al Qaeda leaders as they disappeared into the caves and ravines of Tora Bora. He moved from that high accomplishment to Blackwater, which is now engulfed in a series of scandals reflecting questionable management practices. Moreover, CIA officers complain that Black’s move to Blackwater entailed the privatization of vital national security relationships for personal profit, another hallmark of abuse in the Bush Administration.

McCain is turning for guidance to American military tradition and ethics. Romey on the other hand draws on Hollywood cartoons and adventurists. It’s quite a difference. And at the moment, it looks like the Republican base will take Chuck Norris over George Washington and Dwight Eisenhower any day.

Among the other candidates in the Republican field, Huckabee is clearly in the process of transforming his position on the torture question. He’s drawing closer to John McCain’s view with each passing debate. I’ll go out on a limb and say we’ll soon see three Republican candidates taking a clear-cut anti-torture position: John McCain, Ron Paul and Mike Huckabee. Not coincidentally, the first two are the Republican candidates who consistently draw the most support from the active-duty military. Huckabee is clearly intent on pitching more effectively to the same community."

- Scott Horton

"It's a defining issue and this was a defining moment. Romney's pathetic and despicable inability to say that he opposes waterboarding and that waterboarding is torture disqualifies him from the presidency, in my view. If we are going to recover from the profound moral disgrace of the Bush-Cheney torture regime, McCain and Paul are the only Republican candidates who should be considered for the job. I just wish McCain had taken on Giuliani as well. But God bless him. And God bless him for insisting that those who refuse to disown torture should actively support withdrawal from the Geneva Conventions. It's the only honest position to take. I saw the man defeated by Cheney and Addington in 2006 come back to fight again. God bless him."

- Andrew Sullivan

Kinda feels like the audience, clapping and booing to everything they say, sort of take the seriousness out of the debate. It feels more like a some sort of TV game show than a political debate

In my opinion, the pro-war/pro-torture position simply does not hang together. If you are pro-war (and not in the military) you are essentially asking other people to sacrifice their lives and limbs for some shared ideals. And what are these ideals? Let's assume they include good stuff, like freedom and all that, and that they probably do not include torture and other behavior associated with "evil doers".

The pro-torture argument is that if we can save some innocent life by torturing an evil-doer who probably deserves it then that's fine--especially if it keeps a bomb from going off in my local shopping mall. Ideals be damned.

Put these together and you get Romney's position: "Let's sacrifice our ideals if it'll save my ass, but lets defend them to the death if it just costs yours."

So it's all flags and handshakes now, but once one of these guys gets elected, it's all about taking care of number one. And number 1 ain't you--you ain't even number 2. (RIPFZ)

Good Comments.

Wazant - seems to me you hit the nail on the head.

This issue seems like an easy one to settle (I know it's been said before) - Let Romney (or anyone else who seems to think there's really some sort of question here) undergo the procedure and then see what he says. That would take some courage and give some credibility to his position.

Of course, I suspect he may not come to the same conclusion...

"we're not going to do what pol pot did, we're not going to do what's happening to buddhist monks while we speak"

FUCKING AMEN.

Romney is such a tool. McCain's no better. How do any of those clowns presume to be presidential timbre. Paul's the only honest one on the stage.

A man that can't admit that water-boarding is torture is a man at odds with reality.