The more I listen to Republican apologetics for torture, the more disturbed it makes me. A familiar refrain is "I'm not concerned with the rights of some terrorist."

Okay, well why should you care about the rights of some American murderer, rapist, or child molester?

The whole reason we have things like habeas corpus is so we don't have innocent people locked up for no good reason. The person has some kind of recourse in challenging their detention. This separates us from places where people are rounded up and thrown in jail arbitrarily, or when the government just doesn't like them or what they say or believe.

The severity of the crime they're accused of doesn't matter. The idea is that you don't just lock people in a black hole without giving them some kind of hearing.

The argument with terrorists goes that they don't play by the rules, so why should we? Well, an American murderer doesn't play by the rules either. Why should we?

The same logic that applies to giving the worst, most despicable criminals basic due process and human rights should apply to all people, everywhere. Unless we think they're somehow subhuman, and those are the overtones I'm getting from some of this talk excusing torture.