tablizer asserts

I don't think very many agree that our intelligence branch should *never* torture to get information...

Count me among the Not Very Many, then.

And of course, someone will trot out the old "Terrorist X, in custody, has planted a thermonuclear device somewhere in Manhattan, and it'll blow in just one hour unless we sweat 'im..." chestnut. So let's make it a little more interesting. You've rounded up ten suspects, one of whom is Terrorist X and the other nine of whom know nothing about the plot: wrong place, wrong time. Do we torture them too? Did I mention that we don't know T. X's age, gender, race or nationality? OK, a hundred suspects? A thousand? See, you can get as silly as you want to with these hypotheticals.

The best reason for saying "never" is that if you say "sometimes," the special circumstances proliferate and pretty soon, well, hell, it's SOP. Only please to call it—oh, what's that nice Israeli euphemism (I honestly can't bring it to mind, but it sounds so much cleaner than torture, something we know the heroic kibbutzniks who made the desert bloom and who have that very convenient moral blank check with no expiration date from the beastly Hun, would never, never do)—and not "torture"...such an ugly word...

cordially,