Former president Jimmy Carter recently expressed the moral position that “It is embarrassing to see the president and vice president insisting that the CIA should be free to perpetrate ‘cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment or punishment’ on people in US custody.”

NBC reported a national poll showing that 53% Americans approve of torture. How is the case for torture being packaged from this administration and from the media? The selling point is on the false security presumption that torturing a suspect may save lives i.e. if they inflict enough pain on the suspect, he’ll confess or reveal information pertinent to a planned attack.

It’s a sad day in America to learn that torture is up for debate in the first place. As moral human beings, we ought to know a priori that torture is morally wrong. Period. But since it is being debated these days, consider the fact that if you’re for torture, then that makes you a torturer.

When the FBI successfully captures a thug who was caught torturing his victims in his basement, we severely condemn the torturer and we rightfully conclude that his actions were unconscionable; they offend our sensibilities of what it is to be human and humane.

When we see Mafia figures on TV committing outrageous acts of violence, essentially torture, before killing their enemies, we don’t conclude, “The Mafia is a respectable organization. Our politicians should learn from their behavior on how to handle conflicts.”

Americans who support the methods of torture in the name of security are themselves torturers, including George. W. Bush and Dick Cheney.

Hitler never shot a single person. He never tortured a single individual. And yet, in retrospect, Hitler was held accountable for the holocaust. When a person pays someone to murder someone else, although he didn’t actually do the killing, he is, nevertheless, found guilty in a court of law.

Americans who support torture have blood on their hands. They are guilty of committing heinous crimes against humanity – whether they believe it’s for the higher good of security or not. If you were caught torturing someone in your basement and you told the judge and jury that it was for the higher good of protecting American lives, you would be sentenced to life in prison.

So let’s be clear: If a CIA operative is doing the dirty work, and you support his interrogation methods, then you are committing the act of torture as well. You, too, are guilty. Existentially speaking, you might as well be right in the same room with the CIA agent, suffocating the suspect with plastic bags, drowning him over and over again in a tub of freezing ice cold water, shocking his testicles, his brains with high electric voltage and employing other torture instruments to the suspect. Yes: You Are Guilty. You Are a Torturer if you agree with George W. Bush’s immoral policy of torturing suspects for information. You are no better than a Mafia thug.

Please don’t deceive yourself into thinking that you’ll do anything to protect American lives, as if torture were patriotic. If you realize that torture is wrong when a civilian does it to another civilian, what makes it right if your president believes it’s the right thing to do?

George W. Bush has not physically tortured the suspect, but like Hitler, when the smoke clears, he will be held accountable for committing crimes against humanity.

Jacqueline Marcus’ editorials and letters have appeared in the Washington Post, Salon, Slate, CommonDreams.org, New Times, (San Luis Obispo, CA Cover story: “The Politics of Restraint”). Her poems have appeared in national university journals, The Kenyon Review, The Ohio Review, The Antioch Review and many more periodicals. Her book of poems, Close to the Shore, was published by Michigan State University Press. She teaches philosophy at Cuesta College and is the editor of ForPoetry.com.