For background, here is the ABC News story on the former assistant AG who went to great lengths to explore whether torture is legal.

John McCain flat out says that waterboarding is torture and illegal, and smacks his rivals for their draft dodging. Where have you been, Maverick McCain?

"There's a clear division between those who have a military background and experience in these issues and people like Giuliani, Romney and Thompson who don't — who chose to do other things when this nation was fighting its wars," McCain told reporters after touring a shipyard in this military bastion.

Attorney General nominee Michael Mukasey today refused to state that waterboarding is an illegal form of torture. His reasoning is that he can't answer a hypothetical question about the law that you need to know the real facts of a real case to make such a judgement.

Well Judge, I suppose if someone came to you and asked if cutting off a man's head would constitute murder, you would say that you would have to see the headless body before coming to a conclusion.

It is has been noted by countless experts that torture doesn't work. Suspects who are tortured will say whatever their torturers want to hear to get it to stop.

So it is curious that the Bush administration has gone to such lengths to retain its "enhanced interrogation techniques" despite the outcry from its own intelligence professionals.

Well, it's not so curious when you take a long look at what they are really after.

As the faulty intelligence that led to the war in Iraq showed, Bush and his people were not interested in the truth, but in supporting their pre-determined decision to invade. As Bush told Spain's president just before the war began, "I am optimistic because I believe I am right. I am at peace with myself."

This belief that Bush and Dick Cheney have that they are right despite any evidence comes up over and over again. Theirs is a faith-based reality, where believing is everything.

They don't care if the intelligence they gather is the truth. They already know the truth. To them, intelligence gathering is all about making the case for what they already believe.

Torture is the perfect tool for them. They want the suspects to tell them what they want to hear. That is the whole point.

George W. Bush would no more back down on these false beliefs than he would disavow Jesus Christ. No amount of reality intrusion can stop him.

Which is why in times of trouble, large segments of the country voted for him. He was their rock during a confusing and dangerous era. For some reason, people have this image that a leader who changes his mind is weak. But as we have seen, a leader who doesn't can be a total disaster.

Update: Here is a glimpse of just how faith-based and insulated the Bush-Cheney team is:

"...And the thing about Vice President Cheney is that his decision-making -- or his recommendations about my decision-making -- are based upon a core set of principles that are deeply rooted in his very being. He is predictable in many ways because he brings a set of beliefs. And they're firm beliefs."

Gen. Petraeus hates America, if you follow the Bush talking point that "enhanced interrogation techniques" are needed to win the war:

The U.S. military commander in Iraq told his troops to fight by the rules after a Pentagon survey found many soldiers and Marines back torture and would not report colleagues for killing or injuring civilians.

"This fight depends on securing the population, which must understand that we -- not our enemies -- occupy the moral high ground," General David Petraeus wrote in a letter dated May 10.

Petraeus, who took command in February to oversee a troop "surge" aimed at securing Baghdad, said the argument that torture can elicit quick information was "wrong".

"Beyond the basic fact that such actions are illegal, history shows that they also are frequently neither useful or necessary," he said in the one-page letter, which was obtained by Reuters.

Should someone ask if he thinks waterboarding qualifies as torture?

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed confesses that he planned 9/11 and killed Daniel Pearl. Or so we are told:

The military barred reporters or other independent observers from the sessions for the 14 operatives and is limiting the information it provides about them, arguing that it wants to prevent the disclosure of sensitive information.

With no one there to verify any of what is happening in these hearings, we really don't know for sure what is being said or done. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is probably just as guilty as the government says he is. But we have been through too much to just have the Bush administration say, yet again, just trust us. If they want us to trust them, then they shouldn't have played so fast and loose with the truth. For all we know, every word in the transcript they released of this hearing could be made up, which is what those outside the U.S. are going to think.

Torture. Secret tribunals. Government listening to phone calls without warrants. We're becoming more like the old Soviet Union every day.

Since writing my last column about torture, I have seen various arguments in favor of the practice that I can't let go without comment.

All of these arguments are based on television-fueled myths about torture. Here's the thing. Torture would work if you know who to torture, you know precisely what information you want, and you know when the stop.

Guess what? This only happens in Hollywood. The problem with torture is that people will tell you what you want to know, not necessarily what they know. You can get an innocent person to admit to anything if you turn the screws on them enough. That means you are getting bad intel, and that is not only a waste of time, but can be dangerous.

Even if you know you have the right person, if you don't know exactly what info you are looking for, you aren't likely to get it. Torture depends on leading questions, otherwise the prisoner will just babble anything. But when you lead them with torture, they will go wherever you want them, not where the truth is.

And last, you have to know when to stop. You might get a suspect to come clean on one pending plot, but you might also torture them into fabricating imaginary plots. And you won't know these are false, or worse yet, you might find out they are imaginary and discount the one real plot.

Of course, the fact that torture doesn't work is of little consequence to many of those who advocate it, just like capital punishment. It is revenge they seek to assuage their fears.

Here is a good story on American's history of torture.

My, how far we have fallen:

"The light of our ideals shone dimly in those early dark days [of the Revolutionary War], years from an end to the conflict, years before our improbable triumph and the birth of our democracy. General Washington wasn't that far from where the Continental Congress had met and signed the Declaration of Independence. But it's easy to imagine how far that must have seemed. General Washington announced a decision unique in human history, sending the following order for handling prisoners:

"Treat them with humanity, and let them have no reason to complain of our Copying the brutal example of the British Army in their Treatment of our unfortunate brethren."

Therefore, George Washington, our commander-in-chief before he was our President, laid down the indelible marker of our nation's values even as we were struggling as a nation -- and his courageous act reminds us that America was born out of faith in certain basic principles. In fact, it is these principles that made and still make our country exceptional and allow us to serve as an example. We are not bound together as a nation by bloodlines. We are not bound by ancient history; our nation is a new nation. Above all, we are bound by our values.

George Washington understood that how you treat enemy combatants could reverberate around the world. We must convict and punish the guilty in a way that reinforces their guilt before the world and does not undermine our constitutional values.

A former Defense Intelligence officer gives his take on the new NIE document:

But to me, the most important, the scariest, and the most damning part of the entire summary is this single sentence:

"We assess that the underlying factors fueling the spread of the movement outweigh its vulnerabilities and are likely to do so for the duration of the timefram of this Estimate."

Ladies and gentlemen, that's the ballgame right there. What this intelspeak means in English is, "The causes fueling terrorism outweigh the vulnerabilities of terrorists and their networks, and that fact is likely to be true indefinitely." The assessment is saying that the main motivations for terrorism -- and the report puts Iraq at the top of that long list -- outweigh our ability to prevent it, meaning, essentially, that Iraq is more harmful than helpful in our counterterror strategy. I already knew that, and so did most readers here, but I don't think that's the conventional wisdom. Until now, at least. Anyone who defends the Iraq war now has to answer this question: The collective judgment of the entire U.S. intelligence community is that under the watch of the Bush administration terrorism is becoming more of a threat, not less of one, primarily due to Iraq. Do you support continuing that failure, or changing the course to solve it?

An officer who has served in Iraq tells how torture hurts the cause:

I remember a seasoned senior officer explaining the importance of the Geneva Conventions. He said, "When an enemy fighter knows he'll be treated well by United States forces if he is captured, he is more likely to give up."

A year later on the streets of Baghdad, I saw countless insurgents surrender when faced with the prospect of a hot meal, a pack of cigarettes and air-conditioning. America's moral integrity was the single most important weapon my platoon had on the streets of Iraq. It saved innumerable lives, encouraged cooperation with our allies and deterred Iraqis from joining the growing insurgency.

But those days are over. America's moral standing has eroded, thanks to its flawed rationale for war and scandals like Abu Ghraib, Guant�namo and Haditha. The last thing we can afford now is to leave Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions open to reinterpretation, as President Bush proposed to do and can still do under the compromise bill that emerged last week.

Blurring the lines on the letter of Article 3 -- of prisoners of war, prohibiting "violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture" and "outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment" -- will only make our troops' tough fight even tougher. It will undermine the power of all the Geneva Conventions, immediately endanger American troops captured by the enemy and create a powerful recruiting tool for Al Qaeda.