No, Marc, then it would be "Americans'."
Incidentally, I always learned that punctuation goes inside quotes no matter what. But in this case, it looks funny. Anyone want to comment?
One thing that bothers me about the arguments I've seen made here and elsewhere is that they often turn into discussions of the form: "... and torture isn't even an effective form of information-gathering." "... and what will happen to American troops in future conflicts if we abandon the Geneva Convention?"
I don't care whether it's effective or not.
I do care about what happens to American troops, but it's still not the way I would base this argument. I want to see more arguments of the form: "It doesn't matter whether or not torture works (even though it doesn't), what's important is that it's wrong. Period. End of sentence."
Once we start arguing about whether or not it's effective, we've already ceded the moral high ground. Once we start saying that we don't torture because of what might happen to our troops in the future, we start implying that it's okay to torture as long as no one ever finds out about it.
If you want to argue about talking points for Democrats and how to win elections, I think there's a case to be made for candidates taking that sort of absolute moral stance on this topic and sticking to it.
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|---|---|
| 2006 | 3 |
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