A Good Read on a Good Question

I've never claimed to be a "moral giant," but it doesn't take a moral giant to understand that torture is wrong. It just is. One visit to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial museum is more than enough to teach most of us that simple truth. So I've been wondering just why the administration seems so determined to hold open the torture option against overwhelming public opinion and the express wishes of a near-unanimous U.S. Senate. After all, we've fought wars before against brutal regimes who used terrorism and torture (see the link above or consider Vietnam). But even in the worst of those conflicts, the nation never articulated anything evan vaguely resembling an official sanction of torture. Now the administration balks at inscribing in law a prohibition against torture. Why?

A post on Common Dreams today offers the best theories I've read.