On orders from the country's chief executive, the national director of intelligence devised guidelines for ?enhanced interrogation? of terrorists and other particularly dangerous detainees.

This would include the use of stress positions, sleep deprivation, physical beatings, hypothermia, and simulated drowning.

The year was 1937. The country was Germany under the National Socialist regime. The interrogation guidelines were composed by Heinrich Mueller, chief of the Gestapo, who authorized the use of Verscharfte Vernehmung (ver-SCHARF-tuh VER-NHEY-mung), a German phrase that means, literally, ?enhanced interrogation? against those deemed enemies of the Nazi state.

The English version of that exact phrase is used by George W. Bush to describe the application of exactly the same torture methods by US officials who interrogate suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere. During the recent Republican presidential debate in South Carolina, moderator Britt Hume of Fox News approvingly used that phrase as a euphemism for torture, as did candidates Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney.

May God forgive our nation, and help us to stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.