You sound like the president. At the end of a long winded answer he mutters "I would do what it takes to protect the American people." This shows that all the self-righteousness, sack cloth, ashes and beating yourself on the sholders and back is just show.
Here's the answer that the majority is yelling at you. Torture a person with guilty knowledge to save innocent lives. If you can kill a convicted murderer, you can torutre and leave alive someone to save a school bus load of kids, including mine and yours. In fact, if my kids are on the bus, I will kill you if you don't torture the sob. And I'll kill him if I can get to him.
I'd like to see you look your kids and wife in the eye and give any other answer.
” Torture a person with guilty knowledge to save innocent lives.”
That has a good ring to it, but it must surely also be the justification of every regime that ever used torture as well. The problem is, who gets to decide who has “guilty knowledge”? If you have a bad apple in charge of that, then you have the government torturing not only the truly dangerous, but anyone the government doesn’t like.
Let’s bring it down to earth. Do you feel comfortable giving Obama the power to decide when and who to torture? I don’t.