We are a young democracy, after all

The old pros from the constitutional monarchy side of things have weighed in on the torture issue:

Evidence that may have been obtained by torture cannot be used against terror suspects in British courts, the House of Lords ruled today.

A panel of seven Law Lords voted unanimously to allow an appeal by eight detainees who are being held without charge on suspicion of being involved in terrorism, against a controversial Court of Appeal judgment passed in August 2004.

The appeal court voted last year that if evidence was obtained under torture by agents of another country with no involvement by the UK, it was usable and there was no obligation by the government to inquire about its origins.

But today's ruling means such evidence is inadmissible under British law. It also means the home secretary, Charles Clarke, must re-examine all cases where evidence from abroad has been obtained by torture.

See, that's how the big boys do it. They don't go and look for loopholes in international torture conventions, they don't write memos picking nits about "as long as we don't intentionally cause bodily harm," they don't consider accepted international law "quaint," they just make a ruling. If you got evidence with torture, you can't use it. Period.

The "debate" over torture has to be one of the darker moments in recent American history. I mean the fact that there is a debate at all. That there are people in this country so quick to defend their party, or so bloodthirsty and paranoiac that they think kicking the shit out of suspects is a path to victory and glory (or even just a way to let off some steam), really throws me for a loop. I've gone on at length about how torturing others debases ourselves. It also retrieves unreliable testimony (what WOULDN'T you say to get someone to stop beating you?) and puts our soldiers at greater risk in the event that they're captured. But there is no greater evidence of the wrong-headedness of this policy than this week's trip to Europe by Condoleezza Rice. At a time where we desperately need additional NATO troops in Afghanistan, US-European consensus on Iran's nuclear program and a lasting Israeli-Palestinian peace settlement, all they're talking about is secret prisons and torture. It forces Condi to trot out there every single day and go on and on at length about technicalities of how we detain and what is cruel treatment and what is degrading treatment and so on. Meanwhile nothing gets done. An entire European visit has been wasted on reassurances, which may be broken again if there are any new revelations. The world literally can't move forward until they understand whether or not the US is true to its ideals. It hurts us practically as much as anything else.