Let me get this straight. Your oath prevents you from taking untaxed intoxicating liquors across state lines, no matter what violence you might be able to prevent by doing so, or the lives you might save (it's a violation of the 21st Amendment to take that moonshine across the state line to use an emergency anesthesia for a backwoods accident where the person needs an amputation), but you believe there may be times where your oath would let you torture someone, in violation of national laws and international treaties?

That's messed up.

And you've just relied on the No True Scotsman fallacy. Obviously anyone who doesn't interpret your oath the same as you do must have flouted it. Or perhaps it's Cheney who says you flouted the oath. How do I tell again who's right?

Oliver North was photogenically insistent that selling arms to Iran, in violation of US law, in order to fund the Contras against the democratically elected Sandinista government, was part of his oath. The enemy had become "liberal politicians, gutless judges and left-handed journalists" says one biography.

I'm pretty sure he believes his ethics are "rock solid" and oath unbroken. How am I to tell if it's broken?