My basic thinking on the torture debate

This CNN article got me thinking about how best to express my feelings about our government's involvement with torture since 9/11.

All countries will do whatever they can when threatened. And I believe any country would occasionally go "over the line" in doing so. Pretending that that's not true is naive (respectfully).

As long as we allow voices inside our country to try to keep us honest, and as long as we reaffirm our ideals and our morality when we've had some time to adjust to the threat, then I think that's what we want. And I think that's what we have now.

Bush and Obama have been an effective yin and yang.

We should learn about what happened, and we should change our policies where necessary as a result. We should investigate situations where brutality seems to have been perpetrated for the purpose of sadism above all else.

We should apologize to those we harmed who were innocent.

We should do all of this, and we should make these lessons a part of our moral fabric as Americans as we move forward through all of the threats that remain.

And we should do this in a quiet, dignified manner, politely in the background, while the brunt of our efforts are on the moving forward part.