Well, it seems clear that the two kidnapped U.S. Marines, now dead, were tortured before their lives were taken by beheading.  [SIDENOTE:  Already, the A-list conservative bloggers are attacking family members of the two deceased soldiers]

There are basically two schools of thought on torture.  The first — which is an honest position — is that we are fighting barbarians, and therefore we must fight a harder and dirtier war against such an enemy.

I, however, reject that.  I think Andrew Sullivan says it best:

I believe torture is always wrong, and profoundly corrupts the torturing nation that endorses it. I also think that in the short and, even more, in the long run, it will prove our undoing in this war. This is a battle between barbarism and civilization. We cannot destroy our moral compass in order to save it.

As I see it, when we abandon our values and adopt those of our enemies, we cede the moral high ground.  Worse than that, abandoning our humanitarianism is exactly what our enemies would like us to do.  It only makes their false allegations about us true.