Quote:
Originally posted by sebastian_dangerfield
Your position is clarified. We're not that far apart. Really, the only difference is, you want torturers to have to work around a law, which they do (hence, rendition). Since that's the reality already, I could even agree with that. Make torture something akin to dope in Amsterdam. Illegal on the books, but the law's not enforced when we ship people to other countries so they can torture them.
This is one of those odd debates where the reality of our animal nature and the ugly realities of armed conflict run up against the law. Which should trump which is a tough question, so we wind up with quasi-legal loopholes as the only soultion allowing both systems to co-exist and not interfere with one another.
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I don't really see a principled reason to think that government agents should have the unbridled discretion to torture people but can't be trusted to decide whether to prosecute others for torture.
As much as anything else, this whole debate is about the Bush Administration's desire to do away with checks and balances so that the executive branch can do whatever the hell it pleases. All government agencies would love to be free of oversight. It doesn't mean they make better decisions -- quite the opposite.
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“It was fortunate that so few men acted according to moral principle, because it was so easy to get principles wrong, and a determined person acting on mistaken principles could really do some damage." - Larissa MacFarquhar
Last edited by Tyrone Slothrop; 10-24-2007 at 03:29 PM..
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