Quote:
Originally posted by sebastian_dangerfield
You're clearly undebatable on this issue. Any suggestion torture works is automatically discounted despite the clear reality that for thousands of years people have used it.
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There are other reasons to torture. The lazy, stupid and pseudo-tough are not a recent invention.
That said, I'm willing to acknowledge that torturing people will sometimes get useful information out of them. I think we ought not torture people anyway, for a variety of reasons: (1) it's wrong, (2) as a method to extract information, it generally doesn't work as well as the alternatives, and (3) to take a longer view, torture doesn't "work" because it is a strategic blunder -- it undermines us in larger, more important ways.
I think U.S. law should bar torture -- I still find it surreal that the point is even in question -- and that anyone in the government who finds themselves wanting to use torture should make damn well sure that the circumstances are so compelling that a prosecutor would not bring charges. For a variety of reasons, there is a great temptation to turn to torture, and if you just trust people to do the right thing, often they won't.
I don't think this position is particularly absolutist. It is, after all, what the law was for the first 225 years of this country.
