Replies

What are your feelings about using coercion/torture on a committed Islamic terrorist to obtain attack information if the life of your mother, father, sister, brother, husband, wife, son, daughter, boyfriend, or girlfriend is on the line?

When it comes to this issue, why does everyone resort to playing on people's fears and emotions? Isn't that a tactic normally employed by the left?

Okay, I'll play along. I'm just as human as the next guy, so if someone I loved were in danger, I have my doubts as to what extremes I would go to ensure their safety. But this goes above and beyond mere personal interests. We're talking about official policy.

You think it's fine to torture a "committed Islamic terrorist." Why be so specific? Why not include the friends and family of a committed Islamic terrorist? If torturing them might reveal his location, would it be worth it?

And why limit torture to the military? Wouldn't it come in handy in domestic criminal investigations such as kidnapping cases?

Since you are the one advocating torture, what restrictions (if any) would you set on its use? How would we know that we have gone too far? And what assurance do we have that giving the government an inch won't mean they will take a mile? Or two? Or 100?

Hi Sheltonmac-

"...You think it's fine to torture a "committed Islamic terrorist." Why be so specific? Why not include the friends and family of a committed Islamic terrorist? If torturing them might reveal his location, would it be worth it?..."

Now you're talking like a patriotic American again! I'm glad to see that you're coming around to recognize what needs to be done at pivotal times in our nation's history. We could break someone like Mohammad Atta if we had his mother on the telephone along with pictures of her with the current day's newspaper.

The fact-of-the-matter of why peoples' fears and emotions are brought into the discussion are because innocent terror victims ARE someone's family and friends. Terrorists have to learn one way or the other that there will be negative consequences to harming U.S. citizens anywhere in the world.

As far as your unlikely concerns about coercion/torture techniques being employed for domestic law enforcement, we can cross that bridge when we get to it. I'm just as concerned about statists as anyone else, but I think your fears are unfounded.

~ Blue Jays ~

>>>>Since you are the one advocating torture, what restrictions (if any) would you set on its use? How would we know that we have gone too far? And what assurance do we have that giving the government an inch won't mean they will take a mile? Or two? Or 100?

1) There are no 'hard-fast rules' on any of the great ethical gray areas. If there were, you me, John Kerry and Indira Ghandi would have four separate contextual understandings of what those rules meant.

2) Subjective decision-making is necessary in life. The obvious extreme case Charles Krauthammer makes with the 'Ticking Bomb Analogy' is one pole of a spectrum. 'The torture as SOP' exaggeration put forth by Komrade Kerry was yet another.

Life would be a heck of a lot simpler if we could speak in terms of always and never and not risk being colossally wrong, but that's not how existence works.