Some lessons are never learned. So it is with a plan that would allow the United States to deport some foreigners to countries where they are likely to be tortured.

After the scandal and outrage that erupted from the photographs of Iraqi detainees being tortured at Abu Ghraib, turning people over to countries known to cut off hands, rip out tongues and behead criminals strapped to crosses in a public square makes no sense.

Torture, regardless of who is shoving the bamboo shoots under the fingernails, shouldn’t be accepted.

Too bad, then, that the president is supporting a provision in the ill-conceived House version of intelligence reform, that would allow that, even while violating international laws against torture signed by this country two decades ago.

It’s a sad testament that the lessons of treating captives humanely still have not been learned. Terrorists in Iraq and around the world have resorted to the most barbaric of methods to instill fear. They murder children and decapitate truck drivers.

But their evil is no justification for other wrongs. And torture is wrong.

The provision would apply to any foreign-born person who is suspected of having terrorist ties. The important word is “suspected.” Detainees could be sent to other countries before ever facing a judge, jury or even military tribunal. Already, the CIA secretly detains people, shipping them without oversight into a system where they simply disappear.

The much stronger Senate bill, which also aims to reform the intelligence community, does not include this step backward on human rights.

If the House provision becomes law, the United States will find itself once again on the wrong side of the anti-torture laws.