Does rape work?

The title of his blog post made me stop in my tracks. But Eric Martin pulls no punches:

To use a slightly more extreme example to highlight the point, if Cheney had suggested that raping (or simulating the rape of) a detainee's spouse would be an effective means of getting the information desired, should our popular discourse engage the merits of that argument? Or, rather, should we recoil at the notion of engaging in such immoral acts for the sake of some expediency, real or imagined?

Torture is a vile, sordid business and should be ruled out on those grounds alone, rather than parsed, rationalized and demagogued into accepted practice. At least, if our principles are more than fair weather ideals to be paraded about ostentatiously when circumstances make them an easy fit, but then abandoned when they become, in the slightest, inconvenient.

As Digby says, torture is not a political football. Opinion polls do not matter. Civilized nations can not last and engage in this sort of monstrous behavior. No matter what Richard Cohen or Harold Ford might think.