WHAT HAPPENED TO THE "ORIGINAL INTENT" ARGUMENT?

Conservatives love to justify their reactionary views by claiming the Founding Fathers originally held the same views. In the torture debate, we haven't yet heard this defense, probably because George Washington himself prohibited torture:

After crossing the Delaware and winning the Battle of Trenton on Christmas Day, 1776, George Washington famously ordered his troops to give refuge to hundreds of surrendering Hessian soldiers. "Treat them with humanity," Washington instructed his lieutenants, noting that accepting the German mercenaries as prisoners of war wasn't just the right thing to do, it might even sway them to abandon their British paymasters and join the American side in the War of Independence. "Let them have no reason to complain of our copying the brutal example of the British army."

In 1777, John Adams expanded on this concept, asserting that it should be considered one of the defining features of America:

John Adams argued that humane treatment of prisoners and deep concern for civilian populations not only reflected the American Revolution's highest ideals, they were a moral and strategic requirement. His thoughts on the subject, expressed in a 1777 letter to his wife, might make a profitable read for Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld as we endeavor to win hearts and minds in Iraq. Adams wrote: "I know of no policy, God is my witness, but this — Piety, Humanity and Honesty are the best Policy. Blasphemy, Cruelty and Villainy have prevailed and may again. But they won't prevail against America, in this Contest, because I find the more of them are employed, the less they succeed."