Torture should be prohibited, but the prohibition needn't be multicultural. What happened at Abu Ghraib was bad not least because it was a break down in military discipline and order. But, to take the press seriously, what if humiliation really were worse for Arabs than physical beatings and we could get them to talk by putting them in women's panties, or stripping them naked and piling them up? Our ability to put psychological pressure on them without trespassing against our own morality is another kind of asymmetrical warfare and I would have no problem with it.

We're at war?

Question:

if torture would have prevented the destruction of 9/11, would any Democrat (or weak-kneed Republican) have supported it then OR now?

We'll wait for their answer.........

David:

Why forbid torture?

Permit me to throw out an ill-formed idea here for comment. I used to believe the left was just misguided or had different priorites, but I now believe many of them suffer from some kind of psychosis through which they project (very artfully) their own failures onto more politically alluring targets. An example would be the church scandals, the fallout from which fell almost entirely on the faith and church hierarchy and not at all on homosexuality in the priesthood.

So my question is: How much of the general anger against the military and the Administration and the horror being felt so widely in the States and elsewhere about these "atrocities" (which are mild by anyone's objective standards)actually stems from the fact that they were perpetrated by a woman?

Peter:

Given that the videos the Congress watched the other day reportedly contain more sex between the troops than "abuse" of prisoners, don't expect to see much mention of the idiocy of women in combat coming from the Left.

No court will ever authorize torture, nor should it. Dershowitz is dead wrong on this issue. If coercive interrogation techiques are truly necessary, they must be carried out in secret.

Lou:

Why lie to ourselves? Are we that immature?

OJ: The line I draw is the use of a system of causing physical pain. Having such a system is immoral.

Do you oppose capital punishment or using lethal means to apprehen them?

No. Do you support the imposition of pain as a punishment in place of imprisonment? Should we bring back the stocks? (OK, I know you'd go for that.) Should we brand embezzlers with an "E" on the forehead or lop off the hands of thieves? Should we have a sliding scale for shocking criminals through wires attached to their genitalia, or bring back the lash? How 'bout a good pressing, or burning child molesters at the stake?

Some criminals have committed crimes so heinous that anything we did to them would be deserved, up to and including burning child molesters. We don't, not because of any sympathy for them, but because of our concern for ourselves and the nation we are striving to be. The same is true of torture; my concern isn't for the terrorist, but for ourselves -- which is why the answer to the ticking bomb hypothetical is still "No."

JFTR I'm not totally opposed to the notion of lopping off the hands of thieves.

But torture isn't generally used because among other very good reasons,it's not a particularly reliable means of obtaining info.

Ali --

That's what people say, but I tend to ignore it.

First, it's just not intellectually interesting.

Second, it's always struck me as a little Pollyannish. There are two related problems: does the suspect know anything and how do you know he's telling the truth rather than just saying what you want to hear. The latter problem shouldn't be too much trouble for anyone who could design a double-blind study. The former is harder to design around, though you would hope to have a pretty good sieve. But just as with capital punishment, torture shouldn't be used at all unless we're willing to torture by mistake.

>Why lie to ourselves? Are we that immature?

You've seen Baby Boomers in action and you still have to ask that?

My six-year-old nephew acts more grown-up than most of my forty/fiftysomething generation.

David
The issue is connected to whether we would or should approve of corporal punishment instead of mere imprisonment. I'm not sure that "concern for ourselves" decides the issue.

I don't perceive of Singaporeans as our moral inferior because they flogged that kid a few years ago, instead of imprisoning him. Matter of fact it appealed to me. (then again, maybe I'm a sicko)

I have no problem with torture as a way of protecting innocent lives. We don't get brownie points for being nice; it actually hurts us because our enemies know we won't go as far as they, and this weakness of will led directly to 9/11.

In the real world of hunting and interrogating terrorists, where the choices are between "unpleasant" and "slightly less unpleasant", and "ideal" is never one of them, you do what you have to do to get the job done. Everything else is details.

Mossad is supposedly legendary for their torture techniques -- one would guess because they aren't afraid to use them. Hence, bad guys are afraid of getting caught by them. Win/win/win -- works for me.

Better to be respected than admired; I'd rather be mean and safe than nice and dead. I really think we have a reckoning that we must come to in this country, and we are being tested right now. The coming election is a referendum on the question: "in a battle for survival, how tough are we, really?" I'm afraid of what they answer might be.

It's curious that of all possible ways to punish someone, the only one currently deemed acceptible and moral is incarceration, and all others, from stigmata and temporary physical pain through death are to be considered uncivilized.

In this world torture is only acceptable when used by totalitarians on Americans or American allies.

In that case the far left applauds it.

The nature of the enemy should determine the methods. There is no pretense on the taliban/al-queda/wahabi/islamist side of fighting by any rules whatsoever. The indiscriminate killing of civilian non-combatants as a form of terror is part of their game-plan. Who knows what they are capable of?

If I were faced with the choice of using psychological or physical torture to determine the location of a nuclear bomb there would be no hesitation. We should refer to the rules of war when dealing with at least quasi civilized foes.

It is not by mere tactics by which we should differentiate ourselves from our enemy.

Three words... Dresden,Hiroshima,Nagasaki

Certainly those were intented to inflict pain?

David:

We're not talking about punishment, nor about extracting confessions--the latter purpose for which torture is useless (they'll always confess) and the former for which it does raise the issues you bring up about debasing ourselves bt inflicting it.

The only issue here is: might torture be a suitable method fopr developing intelligence from those we have under ourt control but who refuse to co-operate. Note that there's pretty universal agreement that we could use sufficient force to kill them as we seek to apprehend them. Once we ascertain their guilt we can execute them. Why not hurt them in order to stop their comrades?

All three were legitimate military targets; all three were destroyed within the rules of war; and, other of somewhat lesser importance, all three were cities in aggressor countries in which the government had the support of the people. Because my concern is with us, rather than them, I have no problem with doing what's necessary to win a war.

Now, which of you would rape a man's 13 year old daughter in front of his eyes to get him to tell you where the ticking bomb is?

OJ: So you agree that your question, Do you oppose capital punishment or using lethal means to apprehen [sic} them?, is irrelevant because we're not talking about either punishment or apprehension, and conservatives understand that there are worse things than death.

Subject to all that, and to my definition of torture, torture is not a suitable method for developing intelligence from those we have under ourt control but who refuse to co-operat even if effective.

No. It's relevant because we have no problem with killing them. So how is hurting them somehow extreme?

OJ: Make up your mind. You say that we're not talking about punishment, but then you note that we can kill them as punishment, so why not torture them for information. I think that's a non sequiter, but accepting the relevance, it doesn't follow that killing is of greater moment to us than torture, or that being able to do the greater always implies that we can do the lesser.

I think there are things we can do: we can lie to prisoners and trick them: we can use psychological pressure; we can even let them think that we're about to torture or kill them. Dressing soldiers up in Israeli uniforms and letting prisoners here screaming coming from down the hall is fine with me. But we betray our principals if we adopt a system of inflicting pain in order to develop intelligence.

Where do you draw the line? Would you rape a man's 13 year old daughter to develop intelligence? If not, why not?

Score one for Orrin with his comment about women in uniform. Report's out today on rape in the services, allegedly prevalent.

One way to cut it way down would be a unisex army.

One problem with torture is that it feeds on itself. See Inquisition.

Another is that it generates false positives. When the Eastern Roman Empire offered a bounty on the heads of Goths, it got a lot of heads but very few of them were Goths.

These scenarios in which a little judicious torture saves New York from an atomic bomb remind me of our spiritual entrepreneurship in grade school. The priest or sister would enunciate Catholic doctrine, and we would immediately try to dream up a situation where the doctrine led to an absurd or undesirable result.

The world does not often -- maybe never -- present would-be James Bonds with chances to avert catastrophe with a little individual force.

You guys are all self-proclaimed grownups. You're not really acting like it on this theme.

"Pain, n. An uncomfortable frame of mind that may have a physical basis in something that is being done to the body, or may be purely mental, caused by the good fortune of another."

It's the second meaning that is causing pain to Leftist, and Islamists. It must be sheer torture.

Ali:

That's wriong. It's not a good way of getting confessions, because you always get them. It's a very good way to develop info.

David:

We've established that we'll kill. Now you're trying to draw a line prior to hurt, but still allow kill. Why is hurting worse than killing in some empirical sense?

Obviously the ends vary and you can't get the info by killing them.

Harry:

You're not trying to stop 9-11. You're trying to get a member of a group to tell you what he knows about it--where he lives, who his friends are, how he was supplied, etc. All those things are easily verified when you control a country.

Or, take Saddam Hussein--obviously he knows things of value to us, about where his money, weapons, hiding places, etc. are. Each piece of information can be easily checked.

I'm not willing to allow killing in order to extract information. If you want to line up 5 guys, ask the first one a question and then shoot him when he doesn't answer, and then ask the second guy, etc., that is on the far side of the line. Similarly, I'm against convicting someone of a crime and then sentencing him to having his finger-nails ripped from his nail-beds.

Having said that, of course this is all line-drawing. Life is the art of drawing lines. By our lines shall you know us. Good lines make good neighbors. My line is just the other side of keeping someone up three nights in a row.

Harry: ?

David:

No, I'd not have us torture their families, but that is how Jordanian intelligence broke the Abu Nidal group, a worthwhile thing.

OJ: No, I'd not have us torture their families. Right, so this is all line-drawing.

My point to Ali was that this discussion is meaningless unless we assume that torture can work. I think it can. I'm saying that we are better off knowingly letting some information escape us than using torture to try to find it.

So we can kill when apprehendfing, because it is so important to stop their activities.

So we can kill to punish, because their activities are so heinous.

But we can't hurt to help stop the activities?

You lose me somewhere in there.

David:

Yes, the line is individuals who we have reason to believe are involved. If the daughter knows something and won't talk, by all means torture her too.

Harry-

Flying commercial airlines carrying women and children among its passengers into NYC skyscrapers was unimaginable to most at one time.

The psychological profile of of these people probably makes them prime candidates for the successful use of psychological torture techniques. I would think they would be fairly susceptible to manipulation and misdirection.

OJ: If the question is whether we can extract useful information that will save lives, why is raping the innocent daughter off limits? The reason is that you understand that torture isn't even conceivable unless the person suffering the torture is morally culpable. Our gut instinct about torture is that the person being tortured should "deserve" it. Torture is not simply pragmatic; it is inherently punitive.

You ask why we can kill to apprehend or to punish, but not torture to extract information. As I suggested before, you're trying to suggest a continuum were there is no continuum. Torture is not simply a lesser killing. It is a systematized cruelty.

Nor are we free to kill all criminals while apprehending them or to kill them out-of-hand. Capital punishment is only appropriate at the end of a carefully scrutinized process (I tend to think too much process). Use of deadly force while apprehending a suspect is equally limited and, albeit after the fact, carefully reviewed.

Also, all the hypotheticals are too antiseptic. What if we only know that one out of ten suspects knows the information we need? Should we torture nine men or women for no reason?

And notice how, even in this thread, the threshold for using torture has dropped from the need to find a hidden nuke to torturing Saddam for some politically usefull information. But, let's face it, the idea of torturing Saddam is attractive because he's a monster who deserves whatever we give him. Once again, we want to torture because we want to punish; not because the information is so important.

Finally, you've been carefull to avoid details. What methods of physically painfull torture are you suggesting we should use?

David:

War is systematized cruelty. We believe it to serve a higher good when we engage in it. Why should torture be any different?

I'd use any and all methods.

The end justifies the means.

OJ:

Are you saying that you only support torture as an act of war?

Even in war, we recognize limits. We try not to kill surrendering troups, we try not to target civilians, we didn't just nuke Afghanistan or Iraq, even though it would have been easier, less costly and saved American lives.

David:

Yes.

I think it has been a mistake not to use nukes more frequently. It has made war more likely, led to proliferation and extended the Cold War for a needless extra forty years.

You're wrong, of course, about not targeting civilians. We got Japan to surrender by killing tens of thousands of its citizens.

Ok, all, it's a fake OJ. Would the real one ever state the classic Marxist doctrine "The end justifies the means"?

AOG:

The end always justifies the means. Their ends were wrong.

David, I think you answered your own '?' to me with your next post about the discussion being 'too antiseptic.'

I'm a simpliste, just trying to drag the discussion down from the moral high ground to the actual mud we live in.

By now we ought to know plenty about how torture works in practice. Orrin thinks it works pretty well.

That's not my understanding of the history of torture. Hesitant as I ought to be about dragging the Salem witch trials in here, certainly they showed that you can create problems out of nothing with torture.

If the issue boils down to line-crossing, here's the line that gives me problems -- whom do you torture?

Who in, say, Iraq is ineligible? Who can we be sure knows nothing that we'd like to find out?

How about Pakistan? 100 million people there, and I'd guess almost all of them could, if persuaded, provide a name of somebody who wishes ill to Americans. How do you torture 100 million people, even if you, as Orrin says, 'control a country'?

If you're an outsider, you won't control it long with that kind of behavior, unless, indeed, you are willing to adopt Mongol standards of ruthlessness.

Orrin wishes to erase the line between combat and postcombat. We kill up till surrender, then we stop.

Except now surrender is a hazy concept.

I am about to write a column I've been thinking over for some time about the issue of 'prisoner.'

I doubt my editor will publish it, but if he does, I'll send a link.

AOG: If the ends don't justify the means, nothing does.

OJ: What about the pedaphile who has kidnapped a child and is arrested without the child being found. The child may be alive and may not be.

As for targeting civilians, we avoid it, and did in WWII. If our enemies insist on putting military targets in civilian areas, those are still legitimate targets.

David:

Torture the pedophile to find his victim? Obviously. What kind of moral reasoning requires the child's death lest you sully your scruples?

Tokyo, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Dresden, Atlanta...

So now you're saying that torture shouldn't only be an instrument of war, but should be used in criminal investigations.

Yeah, no slippery slope issues here.

Atlanta is the exception, but Civil Wars are always the most barbaric.

David:

I'm unbothered by the slippery slope. I don't think there's a coherent objection to torture per se. It should be used when useful.

There's a civil war in Islam. We aren't neutral about who wins.

I'm not sure that "coherent" means what you think it means. Torture is both illegal and subject to the universal opprobrium of western civilization. I'm sure that you're not suggesting that our morality is subject to your reason.

Illegality isn't immorality.

Well, it isn't morality either. In any event, I wasn't suggesting that it was immoral because it was illegal, I was stating that it was both illegal and immoral.

The former may or may not be true, you've not offered any reason for the latter.

Sure I have. It is cruel, it is rejected by the opinion of the dominant culture, it cannot be easily contained, it involves the intentional infliction of pain on another person, it will necessarily require the infliction of pain on those from whom no information can be garnered and the infliction of greater pain than is necessary.

None of those are moral reasons. Indeed, all are reasons not to go to war at all.

Though Shalt Not Torture.

Thou, damnit.

Moses:

Was that on the tablet you dropped? And doesn't the second comment violate the ones you brought?

Oh, geez, Mt. Nebo here I come.

Orrin:

If God had authorized the use of torture to "develop information", I kind of expect there'd have been something about it in Scripture. There are a fair number of crimes for which the death penalty is specified in Leviticus, but I can recall _nothing_ specifying torture as a punishment for crime, or even to extract information. (The Lake of Fire doesn't count. I'm talking about the rules set for the civil authorities in this life.)

Joe:

The Bible does appear to be silent on interrogation technique, but unambiguous in its command that we torture:

Book of Leviticus

Chapter 24
------------------------------------------------------------------------

24:1
And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying,
24:2
Command the children of Israel, that they bring unto thee pure oil olive beaten for the light, to cause the lamps to burn continually.
24:3
Without the vail of the testimony, in the tabernacle of the congregation, shall Aaron order it from the evening unto the morning before the LORD continually: it shall be a statute for ever in your generations.
24:4
He shall order the lamps upon the pure candlestick before the LORD continually.
24:5
And thou shalt take fine flour, and bake twelve cakes thereof: two tenth deals shall be in one cake.
24:6
And thou shalt set them in two rows, six on a row, upon the pure table before the LORD.
24:7
And thou shalt put pure frankincense upon each row, that it may be on the bread for a memorial, even an offering made by fire unto the LORD.
24:8
Every sabbath he shall set it in order before the LORD continually, being taken from the children of Israel by an everlasting covenant.
24:9
And it shall be Aaron's and his sons'; and they shall eat it in the holy place: for it is most holy unto him of the offerings of the LORD made by fire by a perpetual statute.
24:10
And the son of an Israelitish woman, whose father was an Egyptian, went out among the children of Israel: and this son of the Israelitish woman and a man of Israel strove together in the camp;
24:11
And the Israelitish woman's son blasphemed the name of the Lord, and cursed. And they brought him unto Moses: (and his mother's name was Shelomith, the daughter of Dibri, of the tribe of Dan:)
24:12
And they put him in ward, that the mind of the LORD might be shewed them.
24:13
And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying,
24:14
Bring forth him that hath cursed without the camp; and let all that heard him lay their hands upon his head, and let all the congregation stone him.
24:15
And thou shalt speak unto the children of Israel, saying, Whosoever curseth his God shall bear his sin.
24:16
And he that blasphemeth the name of the LORD, he shall surely be put to death, and all the congregation shall certainly stone him: as well the stranger, as he that is born in the land, when he blasphemeth the name of the Lord, shall be put to death.
24:17
And he that killeth any man shall surely be put to death.
24:18
And he that killeth a beast shall make it good; beast for beast.
24:19
And if a man cause a blemish in his neighbour; as he hath done, so shall it be done to him;
24:20
Breach for breach, eye for eye, tooth for tooth: as he hath caused a blemish in a man, so shall it be done to him again.
24:21
And he that killeth a beast, he shall restore it: and he that killeth a man, he shall be put to death.
24:22
Ye shall have one manner of law, as well for the stranger, as for one of your own country: for I am the LORD your God.
24:23
And Moses spake to the children of Israel, that they should bring forth him that had cursed out of the camp, and stone him with stones. And the children of Israel did as the LORD commanded Moses.

David, Orrin's 'dominant culture' ideas derive from the wise ancients, and they loved to torture people.

The Bible may not say anything about torture -- though I'd argue that the story of Abraham and Isaac is about torture -- but the Church issued manuals of how to do, in minute detail.

OJ: Once again, that's use of cruelty as a punishment, not in order to find the ticking bomb.

Harry --

I'd have no problem with our getting a terrorist to talk by convincing him that, otherwise, we'll kill his son.

By US Policy, torture should be prohibited with severe sentencing guidelines. Leniency in sentencing should only be considered when the perpetrator willingly reports his/her actions.
In the case of the ticking bomb scenario, who among us would not be willing to go to prison to save the lives of thousands of innocent people?
And if you were justified, you can request a presidential pardon.
Ticking bomb scenarios are thus irrelevant to policy-making.

Mr. Davis:

They're also irrelevant to the question of whether it's worth using torture to break the Sunni/Ba'athist/al Qaeda resistance in Iraq. None of these guys know where a nuke is, but they know where they spent their last night, who armed them and who gave them orders. Better to torture them than to lose soldiers because we're squeamish.

Moses:

Yes, so it is unarguably moral to torture. Now we're just debating when it's useful.

As the LORD was just saying to me the other day, "It's ok when I say its ok. Otherwise, mind your manners."

It should not be Policy to allow physical torture by the US military. If an individual feels the circumstances warrant breaking this policy AND TAKING RESPONSIBILITY for his/her actions, then they will do so.
Lt Colonel Allen West is a prime example of an honorable military man. His actions did not amount to torture, but he realized that he exceeded regulations and reported HIMSELF to his superiors to face the consequences. While I think the consequences in his case were overly severe (I want men like that in the military), I believe that deciding to torture a prisoner mandates a proper consequence. I do not want torture to become accepted as the standard operating procedure of the US Government.

Orrin:

No. Leviticus 24:1-23 is not talking about torture for information, it is talking about prescribed methods of _punishment_. Furthermore, as popular as Episcopal-bashing is here, let me cite to you Article 7 of the Episcopal Articles of Religion (written back when orthodoxy was still dominant in the Anglican Church):

VII. Of the Old Testament.

The Old Testament is not contrary to the New: for both in the Old and New Testament everlasting life is offered to Mankind by Christ, who is the only Mediator between God and Man, being both God and Man. Wherefore they are not to be heard, which feign that the old Fathers did look only for transitory promises. Although the Law given from God by Moses, as touching Ceremonies and Rites, do not bind Christian men, nor the Civil precepts thereof ought of necessity to be received in any commonwealth; yet notwithstanding, no Christian man whatsoever is free from the obedience of the Commandments which are called Moral.

To follow up to my own post (always a breach of netiquette, but this is something I wanted to emphasize); the Ten Commandments - what most people think of as the Law - are binding on all men everywhere, but the "civil precepts" set out in Leviticus and other books were intended specificially for the governance of Israel during what I might call the theocratic period (and I mean a _real_ theocracy, rule directly by God, not what people think of today as "theocracy" when they actually mean rule by clergy; when the Israelites demanded a king, they were actually telling God that He was fired as ruler of Israel).
But I digress. My point is that Levitician law was a body of civil law (drafted by God) and intended for a specific nation and a specific people; unlike the Commandments, it was never intended to be applicable to the world at large.

Joe:

Yet it is calling for torture--so it is not immoral.

Actually, the commandments binding on all people are the seven Noahic laws.

I'm not taking a stand on whether there might or might not be some special (or even possibly some general) circumstance in which torture would be, on balance, the most humane course of action.

That's how I justify dropping A-bombs on Hiroshima, and besides, I don't believe in Absolute Truth.

I'm just asking, how do we know whom to torture and in what manner?

Are we contending that torture at Abu Ghraib (if any occurred; nothing I've seen so far exceeds what one of my college friends went through to become a Shriner) has developed any useful information? How useful?

Torture for sport hardly seems defensible.

I also cannot quite make any real distinction between physical and psychological torture.

Even if we say, Saddam surely has information, just how to you apply psychological torture to a guy whose goal was to be a dynast when you've already butchered his sons?

Perhaps he has grandsons? Are we going to shoot them in front of him, one by one?

Harry:

How do you know which ones to shoot and execute? We'll make some mistakes.

Thank you, David. I have just visited that web site. Even though my examination was somewhat cursory, I see nothing - _nothing_ - in the seven Noahic laws that instructs any person to commit torture.

I'm sorry, Orrin, but on this specific issue I believe your interpretation of Scripture to be just flat wrong.

Interpretation?

" Bring forth him that hath cursed without the camp; and let all that heard him lay their hands upon his head, and let all the congregation stone him.
24:15
And thou shalt speak unto the children of Israel, saying, Whosoever curseth his God shall bear his sin.
24:16
And he that blasphemeth the name of the LORD, he shall surely be put to death, and all the congregation shall certainly stone him: as well the stranger, as he that is born in the land, when he blasphemeth the name of the Lord, shall be put to death.
24:17
And he that killeth any man shall surely be put to death.
24:18
And he that killeth a beast shall make it good; beast for beast.
24:19
And if a man cause a blemish in his neighbour; as he hath done, so shall it be done to him;
24:20
Breach for breach, eye for eye, tooth for tooth: as he hath caused a blemish in a man, so shall it be done to him again. "

For the last time, and I'm not going to argue about this with you anymore because you're obstinate on this point, worse than a Missouri mule: stoning is a method of _execution_. You don't stone someone to get information out of him, you stone someone to kill him. Verses 24:18 - 24:20 refer to the concept of condign punishment, or, as Gilbert and Sullivan put it, "making the punishment fit the crime". If you read those verses to support, endorse or mandate torture, all I can say is that I strongly doubt this interpretation would be supported by orthodox (with a small "o") evangelical theologians. And I _really_ doubt the Catholic Church (of 2004, not 1504) would agree with your interpretation either.

eye for eye, tooth for tooth, stoning someone so they die slowly. How about we don't torture anyone we just stone them, knock out their teeth and poke out their eyes?

Yes, all those things are fine. Just don't ask any questions while you're doing it.

Now, somewhat more seriously:

"An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth" is a merciful rule of limitation, as the rule before that was "Your entire family slaughtered for an eye." Torture is not merciful.

More to the point, these are all judicially administered punishments for those proven to have transgressed knowing the punishment to be meted out. Although the Torah's proportionality seems a little foreign to us today, these are proportionate punishments.

Torture is entirely different. It cannot be either predictable or proportionate. Someone may simply have knowledge without having committed any transgression that warrants torture. That's why it is important to the pro-torture party to bring up hypotheticals in which the torture is felt not only to be a method to uncover information, but also punitive. Moreover, torture that is predictable and proportionate is going to fail, because the subject will know the extent to which she must hold out, and that knowledge will help her make it.

Finally, the torture is not going to be performed by licensed physicians trained at famous university hospitals. Its going to be performed by Sergeants and E4's, who are not going to have much supervisions. Sure, there are people who deserve to die for their crimes, but does that include couriers who we suspect may have actionable information, but who may not?

The fact that murderers can be executed doesn't really suggest that jaywalkers can have their fingernails pulled out of their nailbeds.

Saddam Hussein is a jaywalker?

Orrin, I am under the impression that the United States military operates with an incredibly high sense of honour and pride, and that this is shared by much of the public, many politicians and especially millions of supportive veterans. Also, the demands put on them in terms of competence and restraint, making war and keeping peace, etc. are at times almost superhuman. Aren't you concerned about what a tolerant attitude to torture would do to their perception of who they are and what their vocations and sacrifices are all about?

Peter:

To the contrary---America at war has always been especially brutal but then justified it all in retrospect because as a democracy we aren't about to blame ourselves, are we?

OJ -- I'm not going to protest anything done to Saddam, but let's not pretend that the satisfaction we would get from wiring him up comes from the joy of learning.

What joy? We won't get to do it. We won't get to see it. Ideally we wouldn't even know it happened. We'd just have a government that knew some of his secrets. Instead we're telling him to either talk or we hand him to the Iraqis--that's kind of craven on our part.