[George W. Bush]

Are you saying the the terrorist apprehended should be entitled to due process, lawyers, etc.. while another terrorist attack is in the works?

No, I said nothing like that.

Some of you have spent too much time repeating your talking points.

If intel believes the attack is imminent, then you have to engage in real torture because you don't have days or weeks to break them with waterboarding and sleep deprivation (with or without panties on the head).

So, to be effective enough to extract information in short order, you'd have to do things like: driving nails under the fingernails, cutting off bits of their genitals or noses or ears, start skinning them alive (entire removal of the skin).

For the FNC question to be meaningful, then that is exactly what it means in practice.

It was actually a stupid question. Only McCain really understood it. If you look at it again, he refers to how unlikely such a situation would be. He's exactly right.

[Capt. Cox]

Based on your last post I think we are in agreement. I see no contradiction between that and the post #22.

Some would argue that sleep deprivation and waterboarding is torture. Those technics you mentioned (ie skinning people alive) are too primitive and I doubt would be used under any circumstance. Not for “moral” reasons but because there are more effective ways to get the information (ie. drugs).

The problem with mccain is that he wants to ban torture under any circumstance. And that would prevent the use of “enhanced interrogations” in those unlikely but possible scenarios like the one brit hume mentioned.

But at the debate mccain said this in response to the question: “If I knew for sure that they had that kind of information, I, as the president of the United States, would take that responsibility. That is a million-to-one scenario. But only I would take that responsibility.”

It seems to me that he took the same position as everyone else there.