I just declared that assassinations of stupid people is legal.....
Can I kill someone now?
The interpretation that somehow inflicting serial suffering to obtain information is somehow not torture is merely reductivism.
The issue is this: The United States constitution, as everyone in the universe has had beaten into them through the incessant political machine that is US media and film, that ALL MEN are guarenteed certain "inalienable rights", not the least of which is due process under the law, true indictments, a trial of one's peers, a thorough defense within the parameters of the concept of innocent until proven guilty. All of these are claimed inventions of the United States Constitution, a way of life the US has been "protecting" through virtually uninterrupted war since 1949 and the "police action" in Korea.
But, we no longer have any due process, people are arrested based on "intel", which the world has seen to be wrong more than right, are kidnapped at gunpoint, taken to an illegal military base [which is legally US soil - babies born there are citizen's of the US] and tortured for information. One need only read about Mahar Arar and come to the conclusion that if one person can be wrongfully kidnapped, imprisoned, tortured and raped, then others can too.
The middle ages mentality and slimy bureaucratic loopholes through which they pretend justification is reason enough to be outraged...the fact that THEY say water boarding isn't torture is really pointless.
We know Ms. Palin to be a devout Christian. As one as well, my question to her is where would she find justification for this in the teachings of her savior?
And yes, I AM calling her out on legal, moral AND theological grounds.