Susu's Hubby poses a hypothetical situation to justify torture.

The choice is not "1 terrorist over ten thousand innocent civilians?" It's never this cut-and-dried. During this same kind of discussion, someone almost invariably boilerplates this sort of hypothetical situation into the mix in an attempt to justify their position.

Tyrants hate to be restricted in any way, and would-be tyrants suffer from the same yearnings to eliminate all impediments to their obtaining absolute power. Undoubtedly some similar argument was offered by King John while he was being "persuaded" to sign the Magna Carta.

One could go through this hypothetical situation point by point to determine just how likely much of it is. For example, in the case of an imminent massive explosion, how likely is it that we would find out about it by capturing one of the terrorists involved in the plot who knows all the relevant details? Remotely possible, I guess, but not bloody likely. And how likely is it that such a person would tell the truth, even under torture? Again, not bloody likely. It would be more likely that they would give false information, send people on a wild goose chase, and the bomb would go off anyway.   

There are much better, more reliable ways of finding out about terrorist attacks ahead of time and forstalling them. An efficient overseas intelligence service and cooperation with the intelligence services of other countries is the best way to go. Plus an administration that listens to its intelligence services rather than blowing them off they way it did before 9/11.

This is a poor—and spurious—argument for running the Bill of Rights and the Geneva Convention through the shredder.

Don Firth