Damned Republicunts

[Thumpalumpacus]

Oh, and.people can and do die under torture, so let's not pretend that accidents death under torture is okay, unless you're willing to defend the idea that the ends justifies the means ... which you're sorta doing already.

I'll be honest with you.  Since I'm no expert, I don't really know if torture works or not.  I also don't believe in most types of torture.  But I can't see what is worse about waterboarding avowed killers of children, in an attempt to find out information that could saves lives, than outright killing people to defend ourselves.  Isn't killing people already a matter of the ends justifying the means? Maybe war itself is unjustifiable. The problem with war is that you can't make it neat and clean. It's a perplexing issue.

People die being waterboarded, too. If you're not certain that torture works, what you're really saying is that you're willing to grab the opportunity to perhaps get useful intelligence in exchange for the certainty of debasing your own human empathy. That is a different situation than live combat where you shoot an enemy aiming guns at you.

But live combat doesn't mean subjecting your opponent to excruciating suffering; it means killing them as quickly as possible, which is quite the opposite. The aim is not to inflict ongoing pain in pursuit of your objective, but rather, taking victory as it presents itself to you, be it through death or surrender. Torture, on the other hand, presents no sure means of obtaining your objective, commits yourself to further desensitization if your initial efforts aren't successful, and leaves it in the hands of your victim to determine the success of your efforts.

As for "believing" in some types of torture but not others, how can you make such a judgement unless you yourself have been so afflicted?

Finally, in the Cheney "bomb going off in 24 hours" scenario, the victim actually has more power than the torturer, because while the torturer must keep his victim alive in order to be useful, the victim may simply have already decided that his death, however it comes, garners him those virgins, and remain silent for just enough time to allow the putative operation to be carried out.