It's not like people aren't interrogated all the time.
It's not black and white, Bill. Treating captives like human beings rather than dogs (see the link below) isn't going to make us less safe.
There's an interesting article at the [link|http://www.newyorker.com/printables/fact/050711fa_fact4|New Yorker]:
The former F.B.I. official said that he opposed coercion on practical grounds, as much as anything else. \ufffdI don\ufffdt believe these things make successful strategies\ufffdsensory deprivation and such,\ufffd he said. \ufffdThere\ufffds a big lack of knowledge about the mind-set of extremists. Doing these things just makes them more determined to hate us. And eventually they are going to be released. When they are, they\ufffdre going to talk and exaggerate what happened to them. They\ufffdre going to become heroes. So then we\ufffdll have more extremist networks and more suicide bombers.\ufffd He also felt that there was a moral imperative to avoid coercive interrogations. \ufffdWe can\ufffdt go down to the level of our enemies,\ufffd he said. \ufffdIf we do, it\ufffds going to come back at us later on.\ufffd
Officials at the Washington headquarters of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service were also incensed by the use of coercive techniques at Guant\ufffdnamo. Some N.C.I.S. officials are participating in a combined task force preparing detainee cases for eventual prosecution, and they had access to computerized versions of the interrogation logs at Guant\ufffdnamo. When the officials read the details of Qahtani\ufffds interrogation, they had an extraordinary internal dispute.
According to a passage in Vice-Admiral Church\ufffds report that is unclassified but has not been released to the public, in December, 2002, Dr. Michael Gelles, the chief psychologist at the N.C.I.S., spoke with Alberto J. Mora, the Navy\ufffds general counsel, saying that, in his professional opinion, \ufffdabusive techniques\ufffd and \ufffdcoercive psychological procedures\ufffd were being used on Qahtani at Guant\ufffdnamo. Gelles warned of a phenomenon known as \ufffdforce drift,\ufffd in which interrogators encountering resistance begin to lose the ability to restrain themselves.
In July, 2004, Mora wrote a memo to Church\ufffds investigative team, in which he recounted his discussion with Gelles. He said that he had found the tactics he had read about in the Qahtani interrogation logs to be \ufffdunlawful and unworthy of the military services.\ufffd Mora argued that these practices \ufffdthreaten the entire military commission process.\ufffd According to the Church report, an N.C.I.S. official subsequently said that if the abusive practices continued \ufffdN.C.I.S. would have to consider whether to remain co-located\ufffd in Guant\ufffdnamo. According to a recent ABC News report, in January, 2003, Mora also told William J. Haynes, the Pentagon\ufffds general counsel, that \ufffdthe use of coercive techniques\ufffd could expose both interrogators and their administrators to criminal prosecution.
[...]
(Emphasis added.)
The solution is to stop using abusive interrogation techniques and to follow the GC. Not to try to define what's permissible and what isn't.
As the former FBI fellow said, eventually the vast majority of these people are going to be released. Do we really want to feed their hatred, or build new hatred, as a result of tactics that usually don't give information that can't be found other ways?
"But what about the nuclear bomb that's going to go off...?"
There's a saying - [link|http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a3_201.html|The Exception Proves the Rule]. The plain meaning of the law holds unless exceptions are explicitly spelled out.
If Mr. X knows the location of a bomb in NYC that will go off in 12 hours, and if Mr. Y is interrogating him, trying to find out where it is and how to disable it, then it seems to me there is no issue. How? Easy. If Mr. Y truly believes he has to use torture, then his superiors should be on-board. If he truly believes there is no other way, then he and his superiors should be willing to take full responsibility for his actions. They shouldn't fear prosecution if the choice is really as dire as it's presented in the hypothetical question. There's no issue.
Have you ever read or seen Fail Safe? Can you imagine General Black arguing that we need to change the law regarding permissible coercive interrogation techniques? I can't.
Cheers,
Scott.
