"I have no regrets", says Dick Cheney.

But it isn't an original thought. One imagines it was spoken by Pope Junius when he initiated the Papal Inquisition; by Ferdinand and Isabella, when they followed up with the (much more popular) Spanish Inquisition. Pol Pot never expressed regrets, nor did Caligula, to my knowledge. Genghis Khan, Stalin, Idi Amin, Tojo, and Hitler saw nothing wrong with torture.Way to go, Dick. You have placed my country on the same level as the historical pariahs mentioned above. You scum!Now, if some see that as an ad hominem attack, I can't help that. It is an attack on a policy and an attitude that was clearly illegal. This man is still - as his approval raiting hovers around 18%- defending actions that, whan done by the Japanese in WWII, resulted in trials, convictions and executions. Executions by the United States - the same United States that committed the same atrocities during his time in power. Even if we assume that Bush was a finger puppet who did what he was told, that still leaves Rumsfeld, Gonzalez, Rice and the authors of the torture memos who were guilty of what we executed Japanese soldiers for. Oh yes, and Cheney. Musn't forget Cheney On the first page, I spoke to the illegality of torture. Would anyone care to look at it from a moral standpoint? One of the first moral imperatives I learned as a Christian was "the end doesn't justify the means". Simply put, If you agree that torture is -on its face- an immoral, sinful;, disgusting act, no amount of argument about how much success it may or may not have had is relevant. If it was wrong - it was wrong. If it was a crime- it was a crime. If it was a sin (for the Christians among us) it remains a sin.Cheney, Rummy and the rest, including, incredibly enough, the famed torture victim John McCain, insist that there was information gained that may have saved American lives, and that makes it all okay. Yep. And Pope Junius would have said that he may have broken a few heretics' bodies, but it was worth it to save their souls. Hirohito might have argued that the Japanese race needed to protect itself against Western incursions into their area of influence. We all know Hitler had a clear-eyed view af a better world - without Gypsies, gays and Jews. Surely they all thought, along with their lockstepping minions, that the end justified the means. Is this really the company we choose to keep?