The administration is now advancing the proposition that treaties prohibiting torture solemnly entered into by our government and ratified by our Senate apply only within U.S. territory and not territories our forces occupy.

President Bush, who proclaims himself a born-again Christian, has threatened to veto a defense appropriations bill that contains a provision outlawing torture by U.S. forces or agencies anywhere in the World.

What would Jesus have used to torture terrorists?

In my youth at the height of the Cold War one of the most serious accusations our government leveled at the Communist world was its use of torture. Torture was considered something so evil and heinous that no country calling itself civilized would admit to using torture.

Now our armed forces and intelligence agencies routinely use torture as an interrogation method. Have we become the very thing we feared and fought all those years? It's beginning to look like it.