[chrisser]

People are advocating torture in order to prevent individual terrorist acts. While these acts may be brutal and horrible, they do not threaten our common existance as a country.

You can't be serious.

Raising the bar to "threatening our common existance as a country" eliminates defending anything short of a massive nuclear attack.

Further, any war is a series of battles, and none of those individual battles will determine the full outcome. Should all battles with a national enemy be forfeit because none individually threaten the entire country?

Any attempt to inflict mass civilian casualties in order to force action or prevent action on the part of the entire country (a pretty decent definition of terrorism) sure falls under the "common defense" clause in my book.

[gridlock]

Raising the bar to "threatening our common existance as a country" eliminates defending anything short of a massive nuclear attack.

There are a lot of things short of massive nuclear attack that threaten the existance of the country. The British burned the White House in the War of 1812 without nuclear weapons.

But that is beside the point.

The point was that people were advocating the use of torture to prevent the killing of innocent people, rather than for the preservation of the nation. I was just pointing out that if we go down that road, there is going to be a heck of a lot of torturing going on.

Please note that this response does not presuppose that waterboarding is torture.