Jane Meyer from the New Yorker wrote a wondeful article on this back in Feb. 2007 called "Whatever it takes" which talked with Joel Surnow the creator of 24.

This past November, US Army Brigadier General Patrick Finnegan, the dean of the United States Military Academy at West Point, flew to Southern California to meet with the creative team behind "24." Finnegan, who was accompanied by three of the most experienced military and FBI interrogators in the country, arrived on the set as the crew was filming. At first, Finnegan – wearing an immaculate Army uniform, his chest covered in ribbons and medals – aroused confusion: he was taken for an actor and was asked by someone what time his "call" was.

In fact, Finnegan and the others had come to voice their concern that the show's central political premise – that the letter of American law must be sacrificed for the country's security – was having a toxic effect. In their view, the show promoted unethical and illegal behavior and had adversely affected the training and performance of real American soldiers. "I'd like them to stop," Finnegan said of the show's producers. "They should do a show where torture backfires."

He said that, under both US and international law, "Jack Bauer is a criminal. In real life, he would be prosecuted." Yet the motto of many of his students was identical to Jack Bauer's: "Whatever it takes." His students were particularly impressed by a scene in which Bauer barges into a room where a stubborn suspect is being held, shoots him in one leg, and threatens to shoot the other if he doesn't talk. In less than ten seconds, the suspect reveals that his associates plan to assassinate the Secretary of Defense. Solis told me, "I tried to impress on them that this technique would open the wrong doors, but it was like trying to stomp out an anthill."

We need more relity checks like this.

Very, very interesting.

It makes me proud to remember that our military is given these guidelines and not those from TV.

I also appreciate a couple things the producer of 24 said:

"The premise [of my show, 24,] is absurd."

"I wish torture worked." wtf?

Great doco. I only wish that it was longer and more detailed.

this is a great, spot-on documentary and even the general pop. not just the interrogations cadets need this kind of eye-opener. I really hope it makes it to the top of #15. instant upvote from me (and yes, you should, too)!

*edit* by the way, regarding the second part, did anybody see the previous Lost episode (yes, I know I'm not getting any respect now that I've confessed I'm still watching it, but whatever)? Is it possible the producers realized the effect from over-stylization of torture and decided to use Sayid (SPOILERS follow) in this covert-relationship "interrogation", rather than just have him use brute force? I'd certainly like to think so.

Wow that ending quote by Washington is kind of ironic. Under his first command, in which he was tasked with resolving a border dispute with the French, several French prisoners were massacred after they surrendered by Indians attached to Washington's unit. Regardless of whether they acted independently or not, it happened on his watch and he took no action to stop it nor punish the offenders. It seems, in fact, that he tried to cover the whole thing up (judging from the letters he wrote to his family which try to make it sound like the prisoners died during the battle) because it didn't reflect very well on his leadership abilities. This incident, by the way, turned out to be a spark that wound up igniting the French and Indian War (also known as the Seven Years War). Washington was later surrounded by a larger French force and forced to sign an admission that he had personally assassinated the commander of the original French party. To be fair to Washington, the letter was written in French and he had no idea that he was signing an admission of guilt (he thought he was just signing a document that stated he agreed to lay down his arms and lead his troops out of the disputed territory). The letter was later used as a pretense for starting the war. Makes for interesting history, doesn't it? I believe that signed letter is still around someplace in a museum somewhere.

The world you kids speak from is insulated....the the fact that you have free time to peck away here lauding and heaping praises and niceties on humanity in a world hostile to humans "being....well, try this on for size-....the torture most Americans experience comes from within. The amount of actual physical "torture" perpetrated by the US government (excluding the blackest of ops, because, quite frankly, all you have is Hollowwoood-type scenarios to cull your world-view from, that and a few leaks and personal stories from ex-operatives) is minute compared to that of Asian countries, terrorist factions in countries that have had no reformation-type history, and dictatorships that NOBODY with a bleeding heart for some water-board victim(wrong place, wrong time, bad karma), seems to demand action against......back to Kim Dung Ill, "torturing" entire generations of N. Korea with indoctropropaganda....."The people of N. Korea, fucked from birth, fucked for life"

Torture for most folks in the US means truck-stop coffee and no fucking Wi-Fi, give me a goddamn shoulder to cry on Human Rights First!!!

Um, choggie? wtf? Are you saying we can't be vocal against torture because we've never experienced it? Are you saying the US should use torture because it is common in Asia? I must be misunderstanding, because nobody is that stupid. Sorry for misunderstanding your rant, choggie.

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?

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.

Can anyone tell me what the guitar music in this is? Anyone notice that it's the intro to Spanish Caravan by The Doors? But I'm sure it's a traditional song or classical piece that they lifted. I'd be very excited to know what the original tune was if anyone knows.

^Jeremy1967, I think you know that it's a waste of time to talk in hypothetical scenarios. But if we are going to talk in hypotheticals, here's one for you, not too far off from yours. Let's say that the terrorists responsible for 9/11 came to you and told you their plan a week before the attacks. However, they also told you that if you told anyone at all, they would kill your entire family. One day before the attack, the US government finds out that you know the details, and they come to you for answers. You don't tell them because your family will be killed, so they resort to torture. Now, isn't it justified? If not, how can you explain to the relatives of the victims that your family is more important than theirs? If it is justified, how can we go about explaining to your family that what they did was for the good of others and therefore right? There is no moral high ground when you are arguing in favor of torture, and I hope my scenario helps you see what a crock of sh*t hypothetical situations are, because they bear no resemblance to actual situations. They are simply made up scenarios that we use to justify things that we cannot actually justify.

So not to get into a conversation with myself here, but in case anyone else cares:

I asked mother Google and discovered that the piece in the video is "Asturias" by Isaac Albeniz. However, Robbie Krieger (The Doors' guitarist who wrote Spanish Caravan) was asked if parts of the song were lifted from that, and he said no, but parts were actually derived from "Granadinas". In fact, the owners of the rights to Granadinas sued The Doors but won only the publishing that was earned in France, where they resided. The strange part is that I don't hear a clear resemblance between the song and Granadinas, but the main theme of Asturias is almost exactly the main theme in Spanish Caravan. At any rate, there is your useless music fact of the day.

Here is the track on deezer.com
http://www.deezer.com/track/139391

The thing I found most shocking about this video is that there are young recruits who think that the character of Jack Bauer is a hero or role model. That we actually allow these kids to carry guns, and interrogate detainees is reckless. I know the military is desperate for soldiers, but we would be doing ourselves (not to mention their victims) a favor if we weeded out the ones who are sadistic, heartless, or just incredibly deluded.

I watched the first few seasons of 24, and found them entertaining despite being ridiculous and melodramatic. Sort of a guilty pleasure. But how could anyone take it seriously?

I hope my scenario helps you see what a crock of sh*t hypothetical situations are, because they bear no resemblance to actual situations.

Are you joking? A hypothetical situation can be as real or as fantastical as you choose to make. To say they bear no resemblance to actual situations is absurd. The scenario I laid out is perfectly plausible. Rather than address my specific situation, all you do is present a fairly more ridiculous one as if it has any bearing on mine. Why not focus on the scenario I presented and tell me why, IN THAT SPECIFIC INSTANCE, torture would not be justified?

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?

Again, refer to my specific scenario. There was a reason I laid it out the way I did. We are talking absolute proof. The terrorist has already confessed full knowledge of the events that are to take place. He openly brags about it. All doubt as to his guilt has been effectively removed. Thousands of lives are now on the line. You have tried EVERYTHING except torture to get at the information which he holds. Tell me, what do you do now to get that information? If you do nothing, you know that thousands will die.

jeremy1967,

If the person we hold knows we know this information, he knows he will be dead or held in jail irregardless if the events occur or not, so he would hold his silence and wait or lie. There is no assurance that torture will produce the actual information anyway, he can lie or just die in the process of it.

But the base problem with that hypothetical scenario is that the ticking bomb scenario never occurred in real life in all recorded history. There is no way we would know what they know, if we did we would stop the event from occurring, torture is the process of going after information we don't know they hold. Even if we torture and receive result A, whats stopping us from the assumption that he holds result B as well? Where does the torture stop then?

Furthermore should we really base our foreign policy with regards to detainment on hypotheticals?

There is no assurance that torture will produce the actual information anyway, he can lie or just die in the process of it.

True, and that is his choice. So, we can do nothing and guaranty the deaths of those victims, or we can try to coerce the information by physical means. To me, it would be foolish not to at least try.

But the base problem with that hypothetical scenario is that the ticking bomb scenario never occurred in real life in all recorded history.

I find that hard to believe. In any case, it doesn't mean the situation will never come up and that is what I am addressing, the possibility of it happening.

torture is the process of going after information we don't know they hold.

Again, the assumption is we DO know they hold the information. Perhaps, the detainee previously released a video tape to Al Jazeera outlining that the attack was imminent but did not give the details needed for us to take any preventive measures.

should we really base our foreign policy with regards to detainment on hypotheticals?

I'm not trying to dictate foreign policy rather address the more basic question, is torture ever justified. That being said, hypothetical situations are the norm when trying to develop a plan of action. For example, what happens if there is a chemical attack on NYC? How about a dirty bomb? These are hypothetical situations and I can assure you we have a contingency plan in place for these exact scenarios even though they have never occurred. I don't understand why everyone is quick to dismiss my example simply because it is hypothetical. Does every event have to have happened at least once in history before we devise a strategy to deal with it?

Here's a more personal example for any parents here.

Let's say, God forbid, your child has been abducted. The abductor has been apprehended for some other criminal violation and it is somehow discovered that he is guilty of the abduction (e.g. photos of the abducted child, bound and gagged, are found in his possession). For whatever reason, he's decided to acknowledge his guilt but will not divulge the location of the child. The police have done everything within the law to get the information without success. He's decided he'd rather let the child die.

Forget foreign policy, human rights arguments, etc. As a parent, how far would you be willing to go to get your child back?

And please don't respond with "hypothetical situations are worthless", "never happen", etc. Humor me, assume the situation is real, and tell me what you would do.

Now you are just being silly, you are aiming for sympathy instead of rational logic. The situation you outlined means you are dealing with a psychopath who wouldn't divulge anything because he already faces the worst circumstances of jail and death penalty.

Torture is never justified. That is the view of US Intelligence community, who know more then you do.

Now you are just being silly, you are aiming for sympathy instead of rational logic.

No. I am trying to get anyone to answer a fairly straight-forward question. However, no one seems willing to do so which leads me to believe they are afraid to answer the question honestly. It is much easier, apparently, to dismiss me as being silly. Please point out where my logic is irrational.

The situation you outlined means you are dealing with a psychopath who wouldn't divulge anything because he already faces the worst circumstances of jail and death penalty.

And I say you are making a lot of presumptions at someone else's expense.

The situation I presented is a legitimate one. Why not give me an honest answer?

jeremy, the point isn't whether or not torture could be potentially be successful, I'm sure that sometimes it is. The point is that there is no immediate way to know how reliable the information you are getting is, and verifying the information costs time, money and human resources.

So let's take your example. The child abductor confesses that the kidnapped child is in some remote region of Afghanistan. To search this area will take two weeks, cost 3 billion dollars and pull a highly skilled squad of marines away from other places where they are highly needed. Do you do it? If he's telling the truth you find the kid. If not you've given his accomplices a 2 week head start and wasted countless resources.

And, so far, I've only dealt with the pragmatic implications of gaining intelligence through torture. What about the moral implications? If we decide that torture is OK, do we have a right to complain when our own citizens and soldiers are tortured?

If the experts in this field find torture to be ineffective, who are we to say they are wrong?

Well, my abduction example was meant to be a little more personal and narrow in scope than the situation you've outlined. I was talking about a local predator where it was likely the captive child was within the immediate neighborhood and time and resources spent to confirm the validity of the information would be minimal.

As far as moral implications, which is worse, the torture of one individual (self-confessed terrorist/murderer/whatever) or allowing the deaths of one or many innocent victims through inaction?

And I am still hoping at least one personal will tell me what they would do if torture is ruled out as a last resort in the examples I've laid out. Everyone is telling me what they would not do (torture) but not what they would do.

Torture, no matter the 'possible' consequences of not gaining the information is below the values of american decency or any other free country. Once we sink to the level of torturing anyone, it sends a message. Torture is ugly, torture is evil, and in my oh so very humble opinion, torture is never acceptable. Continue with your trolling Jeremy1967.
thanks for reading

Continue with your trolling Jeremy1967.

I'm sorry if my wanting to engage in a serious discussion about a touchy subject is "trolling" in your book. I'm at least being honest with myself and unafraid to post an unpopular opinion in order to get people to talk about it. If you've got problems with that I suggest you go elsewhere for the time being.

Dealing with hypothetical situations is also a form of presumption because you assume in all the situations you outlined that we know the most but not all of the information, some critical factor.

You are picking out the tree from the forest that is torture. It's impossible to have the situations you outlined, a terrorist being tortured to save the lives of many others, what if you are wrong? What if you end up torturing someone that is innocent? What if the suspect really doesn't know anything? What if all the torture only strengthens the resolve to stay silent, and you end up killing them?

This is the same reason right now the torture methods employed, the information it produced, the tapes of those events are destroyed lost or not given to the public record. Because it simply did not produce results and someone has hell to pay for violating the Geneva conventions and running the US name through the gutter.

Coercion always works better in interrogation. So far all you are doing is presenting fallacious 'what if' scenarios instead of looking at the wider picture of what the usage of such tactics would mean morally, socially and ethically for a nation that uses them. Especially for a democratic nation like the US.

But don't let logic dictate that, please go back to living in Jack Bauer's world where everything is conveniently black and white for you.

It's impossible to have the situations you outlined, a terrorist being tortured to save the lives of many others, what if you are wrong?

The situations I've outlined are impossible? Please.

I really can't make this any simpler. How many times do I have to state, in my proposed scenario, THERE IS NO DOUBT OF GUILT! Why do you keep asking, what if I am wrong? It's hypothetical. I have laid things out for you so there are no "what ifs".

I'll stop asking the questions. It's obvious no one wants to answer.

This video bothers me to no end. It seems to aid in pacifying people. Look at the first example where the chick is dunking a guy's head under water. Immediatly after some profesional says that these senarios don't exist. "no ticking time bomb" The reality is we are using a similar technique. And everyone around the world does consider it torture except for us. It paints a very fluffy picture. The reality is people are being held without charge, and subject to beatings (wich I have personally witnessed). This is very well done peice of propaganda, and is the cornerstone for how american's allow this evil bullshit to continue.

Its because the political establishment using the cornerstone of fear over a possible terrorist attack has been allowed to set the dialog.

I agree with you, its about detainment without charge or due process, but the establishment has picked the tree from the forest, is water boarding torture? has formed the conversation in Washington for months now, in fact it was one the key points of Mukasey nomination for AG.

The American people are not presented the topic as a whole but piecemeal, then you have people like jeremy1967 asking if we would torture if we knew everything for 100%.

It's fucking stupid.

Torture was implemented to secure the US but all its doing is creating more Bin Ladens because now the world can point out exactly how morally corrupt and unethical the US is.

then you have people like jeremy1967 asking if we would torture if we knew everything for 100%.

It's fucking stupid.

Then you have people like Farhad2000 who are afraid to answer the question.

It's fucking stupid.

Of course because you are framing the issue around a hypothetical situation, so that you can say that I would risk the lives of many to save the life of a detainee from torture. Its the same framework pro-torture folks peddle all around.

I would not torture, because I have seen what torture is with my own eyes living in a state that does torture political dissenters on a daily basis.

j, if you insist on writing out absurdist scenarios with constantly changing parameters, then why not just write whatever ending you like.

Here is one you might like:

FBI Superagents: The Next Generation (Chicago)
Episode 17 - "The papercut is mightier than the pen"

Interior, Interrogation room. A bound prisoner sits in a chair with a light illuminating his face. Stout African American FBI chief Bernard B. Bythebooke sits, clearly frustrated, just a few feet away from the prisoner.

"The kid will die along with half of Chicago, and there is nothing you can do about it, FBI director Bythebooke" says the terrorist in a deep scary voice.

SLAM goes the door as devilishly handsome, rogue agent Dash Zeusman enters the room and says, "Not if I can help it terrorist scum"

Dash reaches for the pen in his notepad and thrusts it towards the terrorists head, only to be knocked away by Bythebooke, who says "As a working FBI agent, you are not permitted to use torture". Without missing a beat, Zeusman winks and says, "Then I resign" and jabs his pen into the terrorists ear canal.

The terrorist winces as blood shoots out his ear and says, "I have been trained for this very moment. I can withstand any torture you can dish out"

"O RLY?" says Zuesman, contorting his face to look like an owl.

Zuesman reaches for his note pad and brandishes it at the terrorist who laughs and says, "What are you going to do? Write me a nasty letter?"

Zeusman then begins to furiously cover the terrorists face with papercuts and says, "Bring me the salt!"

"Nooooo.... anything but that, I'll talk, I"LL TALK!", says the terrorist.

Jump cut to an abandoned saw mill. A young boy sits strapped to a huge nuclear bomb, festooned with brightly colored wires and a huge countdown clock. 20 terrorist ninjas with swords and machine guns surround the boy.

As the clock reaches 01.00.0000000....Zeusman busts through a wall and dispatches all of the ninjas with rusty saw blades and other improvised weapons. He diffuses the bomb at 00.00.00000000001.

The boys eyes light up and he says, "Agent Zeusman, you're the bomb"

They both break into laughter. Freeze frame. Roll credits.

THE END.

I guess the experts were wrong and you were right after all, jeremy. Either that or you watch too many movies.

Sure is a whole lot of "not answering the question" going on around here.

What answer would you like to hear?

From Harpers Six Questions for Darius Rejali, Author of ‘Torture and Democracy’

3. In America today, the debate seems to focus on the efficacy of torture—whether it is a useful tool for getting at the truth. You note the flow from the Roman Ulpian, who accepts torture as something quite normal to be used in interrogation (though he does at some points express skepticism about its usefulness) to Cesare Beccaria, whose monumental denunciation of torture did so much to influence European ideas about torture and criminal justice in the eighteenth century. But today we seem stuck in a debate in which those who use torture are eager to try to justify themselves but unwilling to let a bright light shine into their conduct, ostensibly for national security reasons, though many will inevitably suspect that secrecy is driven by concerns for their own culpability. You offer up a very lengthy and nuanced discussion on the efficacy of torture, and in your Washington Post column on five myths you have pulled some chestnuts out of it. One of them is that “people will say anything under torture.” But isn’t the claim rather the way Shakespeare put it in act III of the ‘Merchant of Venice,’ that people will say what they think the torturer wants them to say? And doesn’t that explain why societies that put a premium on confessions like torture to extract them, and why al-Libi told the CIA about Saddam Hussein’s non-existent WMD plans? Don’t you think that the efficacy discussion has to address the broader consequences that a decision to use torture has to reputation, and conversely to the ability of a terrorist foe to recruit?

Yes, I do. During the Islamic Revolution in Iran, the Shah’s torture was the best recruiting tool the opposition had. Prisons were places where prisoners met each other and professionalized their skills, as I and others have documented. It feels like a nightmare watching American politicians make the same mistake as the Shah. I like to believe that with every mistake we must surely be learning, but sometimes it is hard to believe.

When I talked about people under torture saying anything, I was especially interested in the cases where torturers interrogate for true information. That’s what I document doesn’t work. But it seems pretty clear that torture works to generate false confessions, which serve equally as well as true confessions for many state purposes. When judges and juries value confessions as decisive proof, police are happy to generate confessions for convictions. This can happen in domestic crime, as it happened in Chicago in the 1980s where African Americans were sentenced to death on the basis of coerced confessions. They’re also good for international show trials, trials that exonerate the state’s failures. Stalin wanted show trials to demonstrate that terrorists and saboteurs caused his failures, and he wasn’t the last leader who liked show trials to vindicate his decisions. And lastly, states use false confessions as blackmail to turn prisoners into unwilling informants. Torture allows one to collect dependent and insular individuals, spreading a net of fear across a population. This can happen locally (as in a ghetto) or in a whole state, like East Germany.

It’s also true that torturers often hear what they want to hear. In fact that’s one of the big problems with torture that I document in the book and the “Five Myths” article. Even if torture could actually break a person and they told you the truth, the torturer has to recognize it was the truth, and too often that doesn’t happen because torturers come into a situation with their own assumptions and don’t believe the victim. Moreover, intelligence gathering is especially vulnerable to deception. In police work, the crime is already known; all one wants is the confession. In intelligence, one must gather information about things that one does not know.

And let’s remember, torturers aren’t chosen for intelligence; they are chosen for devotion and loyalty, and they are terrible at spotting the truth when they see it. In the “Five Myths” piece I talk about how the Chilean secret service lost valuable information in that way when they broke Sheila Cassidy, an English doctor, and she told them everything but they didn’t believe her. And one can just repeat dozens of stories like this. My favorite is when Senator John McCain tried to explain the concept of Easter to his North Vietnamese torturer. “We believe there was a guy who walked the earth, did great things, was killed and three days later, he rose from the dead and went up to heaven.” His interrogator was puzzled and asked him to explain it again and again. He left, and when he came back, he was angry and threatened to beat him. Americans couldn’t possibly believe in “Easter” since no one lives again; McCain had to be making this up."

What answer would you like to hear?

An answer to the question that I've asked several times now like this one:

"And I am still hoping at least one person will tell me what they would do if torture is ruled out as a last resort in the examples I've laid out. Everyone is telling me what they would not do (torture) but not what they would do."

or this one:

"Again, refer to my specific scenario. There was a reason I laid it out the way I did. We are talking absolute proof. The terrorist has already confessed full knowledge of the events that are to take place. He openly brags about it. All doubt as to his guilt has been effectively removed. Thousands of lives are now on the line. You have tried EVERYTHING except torture to get at the information which he holds. Tell me, what do you do now to get that information? If you do nothing, you know that thousands will die."

So once again, in my scenarios, what would you do if torture was not an option? Quite a simple question really. I'm guessing it's the answer that's giving you a hard time.

*waits for explanation about how my scenarios are silly/impossible/stupid*

As many have said over and over in this thread in many shades of seriousness and sarcasm, torture isn't reliable or effective, so ruling it out doesn't really make a lot of difference in your exciting scenario.

According to people who do this kind of thing for a living, building a rapport with the prisoner is the most effective means of extracting information.

I suppose I would follow whatever FBI protocol is most effective in these situations based on past experience. I'm sure you could find a book or article about what those particulars might be if you are as curious as you claim to be. I'd probably also look for other leads.

Let me clarify my question. At the risk of belaboring the point, take note that in my scenarios I also said that everything up to the point of torture had been tried without success. I'm saying torture is a last resort meaning whatever FBI protocols are in place, looking for additional leads, etc. has already been attempted and you find yourself no closer to the information that you know the individual possesses. You've tried everything except torture. Being opposed to torture, what do you do at this point where all else has failed?

You are clearly looking for 'Torture Him' so.... Let's torture him! Even though it's most likely a futile exercise, at least you could get some of your frustrations out.

Jeremy, as others have already pointed out a real life ticking time bomb scenario is a lot harder to find than they are in the movies or the right wing "what if" scenarios, and to deal with a what if which has rarely if ever happened we've admitted to tactics such as waterboarding and stress positions which we've ourselves charged as war crimes in the past. We can show probable crimes since they've been admitted to or otherwise documented but we can't prove a justification for them and haven't really even tried to. To me that's a problem which the what if questions really don't deal with, they just obscure what strikes me as an important issue and one we seem intent on ignoring rather than justifying or prosecuting.

But just for a moment let's assume one day a real ticking time bomb situation did pop up. The law already deals with that and always has, since the founding of the nation. Ever hear the term "no jury would convict"? It's called jury nullification and happens more often than people think, it's 100% legal and a right which has been upheld the whole way to the Supreme Court. They don't have to convict anyone if they think the application of the law is unjust.

We don't need to legalize or justify anything to deal with a real situation and we never have, if one day someone saved New York from a nuke by twisting some fingers I doubt they'd have much trouble over it. In the mean time here in the real world what we've got is the US breaking not only international law but our own. Rather than confronting it and charging or justifying it we've been trying to obfuscate the issue with theoretical rather than real world justifications. That's a problem.

This thread was torture-rather be in a Vietnamese beauty shop, listening to that lilting sing-song-a whole lot of cut and paste and self-aggrandizing keyboard masturbation....torture is bad, M'kay???

Name a scenario on earth that does not involve daily human torture then talk about one of the worst fucking shows ever created-I wish Danny Pearl was here....all of him.

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