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Say I break down your door right now and threaten to kill your loved ones unless you tell me where the bomb is. What do you say? I don't like your answer and kill one of your relatives. Now what do you say? I like your second answer even less and chop of your thumb. Now what do you say?

Are you seeing the problem here?

No buts.....

Torture isn't reliable. Is the victim innocent and just telling the torturer what he thinks the torturer wants to hear? Is the victim telling what he believes to be the truth, but in actuality is wrong? Is the victim lying? Is he pretending to lie? Is he telling the truth? Is he telling a half truth? Is he trying to smear his enemies? Is he making a wild guess? Is he making an informed guess? There are just way too many variables and psychological complexity for torture to be of any use.



In reply to this comment by jeremy1967:
I'm sure this will be a very unpopular viewpoint but... I didn't really see the evidence in this video that showed definitively that torture is never justified. Sure, better options should be persued initially and any type of torture would be an absolute last resort and only in special situations. Do people honestly believe that torture could never be justified under ANY circumstance?

Let's say, hypothetically, that we held someone that we knew, without a doubt, had advance knowledge of the 9/11 attacks and could provide the who, the when, and the where. Let's also suppose we tried every other technique in the book in order to obtain this information without success. Finally, we find ourselves in the aforementioned "ticking timebomb" situation. Is this one individual's human rights worth more than the thousands of innocent lives that would be spared?

Keep in mind, in this hypothetical situation, I am talking about absolute certainty, as rare as that may be. Wouldn't access to the information be justified by any means necessary in this situation? If not, how do you go about explaining to the relatives of the victims why you did not do everything possible to try and save their loved ones?