If a terrorist is sitting there saying "Soon you shall see," it seems like a no brainer to me.
He knows something. He isn't telling. Do we do something that was deemed legal at the time and possibly save thousands of Americans?
Or do we sit there and cross our fingers and toes and hope he's lying?
This is repetitive at this point. This scenario has been asked and discussed many times.
My answer is that if I were the interrogator, and I really, truly had a strong reason to believe that the suspect in fact had crucial information that would lead to the death of many, and other interrogation methods didn't work, yeah I would personally put the screws to the guy.
But I wouldn't support making it legal.
You support doing it, as a last resort, if it would lead to saving thousands of Americans, but you won't make it, under those same circumstances legal.
That makes no sense at all.
It does, for the same reason I'd rob and steal to save my kid but wouldn't support making that legal either.
There are some thinks that you have rules against even though sometimes the rules are justified in being broken. Torture is one of those things. It's against the law because as a general rule we don't approve of it, we don't condone it, and as Americans we don't do it. Torture is what our enemies do. It's what the IJA, Gestapo and Khmer Rouge did.
Torture is against our principles as a people as those principles are set out in our Constitution, in this case the 8th amendment. It hurts our nation in the eyes of the world and in our effort against anti-American radicalism because it makes us seem no better (or not much better) than the bad guys. Reagan's shining city on the hill doesn't torture. Americans do not torure. We are the good guys.
And I don't buy that BS about water torture is really only "enhance stress interrogation" or whatever ephemism is dreamed up to avoid calling it what it is. And the fact that the bad guys do it worse does not justify us doing it but maybe not quite as bad as them.
But even though it is against the law, it those rare situation where it is really necessary amd justified, it still has always happened and always will.
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