Apples and Oranges

The fact that "enhanced interrogation" techniques, i.e., water-boarding, led in part to finding and eliminating Osama bin Laden, coupled with the Obama Administration's refusal to concede as much, has resurrected the debate over whether or not such methods constitute torture. 

I've noticed in the back-and-forth that one of the rhetorical tactics often employed by the Left is to ask whether or not we would want our soldiers treated thus if they were to be captured by Al Qaeda.

The easy answer, of course, is that we would would not want them so treated.

However, if the US were routinely engaged in indiscriminate mass murder and one of our captured soldiers was believed by the enemy to hold important information regarding the next-planned episode, then their use of water-boarding in order to extract the relevant intelligence would be both understandable and justified.

The unstated premise of the Leftist's question is that between the US and Al Qaeda, there really is no difference at all.  But it isn't so, and we, and the Left, know it isn't so.  What this all reveals, again, is what the Left really thinks of their own country.

You see, the point of their question is not to lift us to a higher standard, but rather to drag us down.  And if more than a few of us get killed in the process, oh well, every revolution has its costs.