>>Those who protest this would rather have had the dozen or so attacks happen than this terrorist receive 35 seconds of discomfort.
Don’t give me that “we’re better than this”.
What’s worse?
35 seconds of water up the nose to save thousands of civilians’ lives?
The razing of Dresden?
Two A-Bombs on civilian population centers to end a war?<<
In an isolated case where a known terrorist is known to have knowledge that would stop an imminent attack and there would be no repercussions, of course I’d support torture.
In practice, once torture is authorized, it is used to see what can be extracted. It winds up being used on people who don’t have imminent information. And it sends the message the the U.S. are no longer the good guys. There is no telling how many lives and how much suffering that may cost in exchange.
Yeah, eschewing torture has kept Americans from being treated badly by Al Qaeda.
What was I thinking...