"Verschärfte Vernehmung"

Andrew Sullivan finds an eery similarity between the Bush administration's defense of "enhanced interrogation techniques" and the Nazis'.

And Hilzoy notes, if we are going to turn in our collective soul like so many shoes at the bowling alley, shouldn't we make damn sure that we're losing our soul over something that works?

If you're serious about war, you should ask yourself, at every juncture, what will best achieve your objectives, rather than embracing some sort of Rambo fantasy. That would require asking very serious questions about the effectiveness of torture, and also about the effect it is likely to have on our long-term objectives, and the possibility that by forfeiting our moral authority, we lose much more in the long term than we could gain even if torture did work. If you're serious about loving your country, you should never be willing to degrade it, or to embrace in its name the kinds of techniques that made us rightly despise Stalin. And if you're serious about morality, you should know that there are lines you cross only at the risk of losing your soul. It's bad enough to lose your soul because you had to choose between two great evils, and you chose wrong. But there's no excuse for letting your soul slip through your fingers because you're too busy striking a stern and heroic attitude to notice.

Striking an attitude has been our current leadership's approach to governing and conducting war for six years now and they have never been curious about the state of their respective souls.