Legalizing Torture.

In general I agree that torture is a bad thing.

That said, I can imagine at least one circumstance where I would use it myself to ANY imaginable degree of horror. Suppose for a moment that my son was being held by those in Iraq that just sawed off the heads of the other two Americans and my son was next. Suppose I also held a person that I had Iron-clad evidence was involved (e.g. appeared as a bad guy in one of the videos of the other victims) and knew where my son was being held. There is nothing (literally) I would not do to this person if I thought it would get the required information from him to be able to try to save my son.

So for me, there is a grey area. I wish there weren't, but there is none the less. Where does government sanctioned torture come into this? I don't know. Even in the above situation, I would not petition my government to negotiate with the terrorists. I can't say I'd feel too bad about my government undertaking torture in this circumstance for me though.

Torture is a means to an end, and the end can justify the means. If someone else forces you down that route, then your actions are justified.

Ben: I can understand your point of view, however in practical terms we run into a problem in that unless it is "low-grade" and applied as part of a long term brainwashing technique it is extremely inaccurate.

For example, you get the required information but it turns out that he actually gave you the house two doors down and now the kidnappers know what happened and carry out their threat anyway. You are now only left with torture as vengance which is even worse.

I do not believe that there is any case that could justify torture, however the older I get the more I realize that I am hopeless naive and this could be one of those cases.

1) This 'ticking time-bomb' scenario is not realistic, nor is it grounds to legalize torture. Is it worth torturing an innocent person for a hypothetical? Given the track record of US "Homeland Security," that is exactly what would happen--and frequently. In the unlikely event that such a critical 'time-bomb' situation were to arise, with certainty about the identity and knowledge of the suspect, then the President already has the legal authority to pardon any individual that takes extreme measures to save lives.

2) Information obtained through torture is useless. Isn't American intelligence bad enough already, without relying on information pulled from suspects with pliers?

On a purely practical level, we know from the Maquis in WW2 that an organisation simply assumes that any arrested member will break, and changes accordingly.

So we get the moral degradation, for no good reason.

The most thoughtful commentary on this subject I've come across is by Mark Bowden, who argues that torture should be strictly illegal, but that in extraordinary circumstances officials should use it anyway.

I found this idea to be cognitively jarring at first, and it will never be satisfying to anyone who needs moral clarity in all things, but it makes sense in the scary context of the world we live in. As Bowden put it in an interview,

If you open that door and ... a priori give approval, then there's no stopping it. Because everyone will use torture; everyone will assume that his or her circumstance is justified. As long as torture is banned, you can only employ it at your own risk.

This is a practical way to deal with the most agonizing of moral dilemmas. True "ticking time bomb" situations are rare, but they can arise. If you are the jailer and you are put in that spot, you do what you have to do and make your case to the court later.

In my opinion, that beats hell out of giving blanket approval for torture.

If what Charles V writes about the President's powers is true, then that's good enough for me.

I am all for making torture illegal, then, with one exception. I would have no problem whatsoever with handing Zarqawi over to the families of his victims, hopefully to be boiled, impaled, covered with pig feces and anything worse that anyone can imagine.