His opinions of the torture accusations against various Catholic strongmen in Latin America have never been recorded. But then, at one time all such figures regarded the Israelis as being the ultimate bosses of International Communism and the Arabs as their fellow anti-Communists. Some people still believe it.
Ironically, I have always been against torture for a very practical reason: if you hurt someone badly enough you can get them to say anything in order to get you to stop, and any such "confession" is useless.
The main issue in any such case is of course Divine Law, and while I don't know what it is in that case, I doubt it approves.
I'm not a fan of torture, but I despise "palaeo" hypocrisy on the subject. And other subjects (hawks vs. doves, eg).
That applies anyway, torture or no torture, Intelligence and professional interrogation is not made useless because someone discovers lying.
Interrogation is not based on the premise that a secret agent or a source of information is not allowed to lie, or that you have no idea what to ask them, or how to discern lies from truth.
They don't just grab a guy and tell him "you look interesting, tell us something, anything, about anything, we don't know or care, we just want to hear stuff, then we will dispatch a SEAL team behind enemy lines, or a high risk bombing raid, or call off a presidential trip for no particular reason, just your say-so".
* Romulus is perhaps the most right wing, traditionalist Catholic on FR.*
That’s DEFINITELY going into my trophy case. Bless you, ZC.
*I’m not a fan of torture*
Not even if it could possibly be of benefit to a Jew, especially in the Holy Land?
I despise hypocrisy too, ZC— of all sorts
Indeed. The professionals who gather and analyze intelligence (as opposed to people yammering to each other on the internet and speaking in front of convention peanut galleries) know that the effective approach is to psychologically manipulate the subject so that the normal impulses of man-as-social-animal include the interrogator as part of his social group. This may take the form of "Stockholm Syndrome", genunine conversion, or something in between, but it works and it doesn't take as much time or effort as one might think.