I'm not sure of any legal underpinnings that require captured terrorists to be treated as formal prisoners of war.

There does seem to be some confusion as to whether we're fighting a war or engaging in extravagant international legal 'extraditions with prejudice." On the whole I support the activities of the ACLU so if they want to sniff around this one a little and then explain WHY they come to these conclusions I'll be happy for the input.

I am against torture mainly because of what it does to US, and because it is generally counterproductive. I listen to the talking heads proposing examples of where you have to free a captured hostage and you have a bad guy so why not make him uncomfortable. But the reality is that it doesn't happen that way, and people don't behave that way.

On the other side, I recently listened to a talking head saying that torture should be given a legal status, and one could obtain a writ of torture after presenting sufficient cause to a 'torture' judge. That sounded not only officious, objectionable, but also time consuming and ineffective - the perfect legal solution, the worst of all worlds. which brings me back to my feeling that torture is bad because of what it does to us.

On the other hand, I subscribe to the suggestion that if Usama should ever be captured, he should be handled by the best of surgeons, given a sexual reassignment, then returned to his people. But I don't think that's torture, not by my standards.