However, if you prove categorically, like liberals would, that nukes are totally off the table no matter what, then there is no reason for the terrorists to NOT use nuclear devices in America. Why not? If liberals were in charge and did just that, the terrorists have nothing to lose by using nuclear devices in American cities. That is what liberals don't understand with "torture". It's not actual torture that gets people to turn over information. It is the threat of torture without laying a finger on them that can, and has in the past, made them break.
I have two close friends who, one in the past, and one currently, serve/d with the IDF and it's common knowledge that just the threat of torture gets information out of terrorists. They're not battle hardened, they're not well trained, and most of them shoot machine guns with "spray and pray" mentality. From what I have seen, here and other places, everyone on the "anti-torture" side has a fundamental lack of facts and information on the subject, and uses the simplistic argument that "if we do such and such we're as bad as them". Bull. The fact that the government allows debate and the military has the rules it has, PROVES that we're NOTHING like the terrorists. And given that all these terrorist captives we've captured WERE captured are still alive and not shot on sight, as the Geneva Convention states, that also shows that we are NOTHING like the terrorists.
I would suggest that Senator McCain actually read the Geneva Conventions before he starts telling the military what they do or do not need to adopt. He couldn't even cut his book tour short to appear for the vote which would have put military personnel in jeopardy of war crimes trials during a time of war. Although, perhaps we should incorporate ALL Of the Geneva Conventions into military protocol. Then, we won't have to take any of them prisoner, we can just shoot them even if their hands up. That, plainly and clearly, is what the conventions say Geneva Convention signatories have the right to do to terrorist fighters conducting a gorilla war, while in civilian clothing against uniformed combatants. So by all means, lets incorporate the Geneva Conventions into the U.S. Military, then we can shoot them all even if they surrender and this argument will be moot.
I agree with most of your comments. It strikes me that this is a bogus argument. Torture is not legal now. Trying to pass laws making it a crime is, first of all, a propaganda device churning up a lot of really bad soundbites.
Just the image of Americans arguing in public about torture plants the seed that we are already guilty of it, when in fact torture is illegal now, and soldiers guilty of it are already punished.
A couple of years back it was, in fact, Alan Dershowitz who was arguing in favor of torture, he and a few other left-liberal commentators. The catch is that no one in the military is arguing that torture should be legal. This is, in a way, similar to the argument for the draft, which was proposed as a poison pill by anti-war Democrats looking for an issue.
This is a similar poison-pill argument, an effort to maneuver pro-war people into defending "torture" when the issue is keeping soldiers under military discipline (and not harassed by civilian courts during war) and the issue is keeping classified intel and intel operations safe from exposure by anti-war lawyers.
What the present argument is about is opening the door for public civilian trials which will place intel operations under civilian court control. It will be used as a hammer by anti-war lawyers to obstruct the war, it will be used to hamstring the war leadership, it will be used as a means of blowing intel operations by exposing them to criminal investigations that may, in the end, turn up nothing, but meanwhile the op is exposed.
"Torture" is only window dressing for an attempt to make soldiers and intel agents vulnerable to prosecution in a civilian court.