What a tragic day in America, when Republicans ignore the Constitution and the Bible in their zeal to fight a worldly crusade, and Democrats ignore these same documents in their single-minded focus on reelection. Machiavelli taught that "the ends justify the means," and this is the creed now embraced by Americans in place of their once Christian value system.

The only effective counterforce for terrorism is to undermine the conditions which feed its existence. Instead, this administration consistently feeds the infection of Islamic extremism, dishing out the exact recipe to strengthen and enrage these people: unilateral support for Israel as it employs excessive force in Lebanon and Gaza "defending itself"; an attack on Iraq, which had nothing to do with 9/11; the use of torture, which has included the inflammatory practices of using women as interrogators, and of desecrating the Koran. Americans quickly dismiss these concerns, judging these offences by their own rather than their enemy's standards. Yet whose hearts and minds do we seek to win? To Arabs who are not currently al Qaeda operatives, America increasingly looks worse than the terrorists, and if nothing else America will lose the sympathies or support of Muslim moderates. Arabs are increasingly inflamed to anti-Americanism because of these policies, and yet our president tells us the terrorists "hate us because we're free." Only the simplest of minds can even consider accepting such tripe as truth. These unchristian policies will turn more and more in the world against America and against Christianity (for we pretend to a Christian faith while we institute patently unchristian policies). This will only feed the flames of Muslim extremism, just as Jesus taught: the only way to end cycles of violence is to reach out in Christian peace, and reverse decades of failed imperialistic American policy: Americans have everything to gain from this, but our corporate dominators have everything (in profits) to lose.

Here are some facts to consider:

1) Korea employed torture against U.S. troops in the Korean War, and dozens of U.S. service personnel "confessed" that the United States had employed biological weapons against Korean civilians. The FBI has concluded that torture does not yield reliable information.

2) Troops face more threats when our government uses torture methods: because they will be less likely to receive humane treatment if captured, but also because our opponents will be much less likely to surrender if they perceive that they face torture. One reason Iraq fell so quickly was that for many Iraqi soldiers, American captivity looked better than freedom in Saddam's army. No more.

3) The methods employed by the U.S. government under Bush's stewardship are a dramatic departure from our history, and are identical to those used in Soviet gulags under Stalin. Thus when the Soviets did what we're now doing, we defined it as fascist repression: when we commit the exact same actions, we call it fighting for freedom and "defending ourselves." Who are we fooling, other than ourselves?

4) America did not employ systemic torture against the Nazis, who were seeking a nuclear bomb and would have used it (God was on their side: Hitler said: "It matters not whether these weapons of ours are humane: if they gain us our freedom, they are justified before our conscience and before our God." Speech in Munich, August 1, 1923; "Lord God"¦this is a war which we wage"¦for all of mankind." January 30, 1942). Nor did Americans torture Japanese POW's, even though it was known that that nation was disregarding the Geneva Conventions and torturing U.S. troops.

5) America calls itself a Christian nation, but there is absolutely no exception for Christians when it comes to torture. Jesus was a victim, not advocate, of torture; and the use of torture by Christians in the past (still well-remembered by the Arab world), as in the Crusades, is easily recognized as Christianity's darkest hour. Until now"¦

Why are Americans so much more afraid today, and willing to commit evils that we eschewed in the past? Why are we judging our own moral standards by the conduct of those we call "evil"? As in: "the terrorists are evil, and so we must employ methods we've never used before, even though those methods make us indistinguishable from those enemies." If America was once great, her greatness was in her morality and equity, her freedoms and fairness. In a few short years, and culminating in yesterday's pro-torture vote, America has pronounced very clearly to the world that it is not the country it once professed to be. You see, the world judges us by our conduct, not our flowery and now empty slogans about "freedom and justice for all," and "divine rights". Of course, Jesus instructed that people judge this way - by actions, not shallow words of deceit ("You shall know them by their fruit"¦."; "faith without action is dead"). And so our faith is dead, our values have been buried with it, and God will turn His face from our sinful disobedience and unchristian policies.

The use of torture and indefinite detention of detainees should not even be something that America would contemplate. Instead, these have become modern U.S. policy. If the Muslim extremists wanted to swell their ranks with recruitment, they could pray for no better ally than the lying and incompetent torturer dominating America and the world. Kiss your constitution and your Bible good-bye America, for they are of no force or effect in the modern war on terror under this Machiavellian administration"¦in the American gulag"¦.