No the Taliban weren't elected, any more than the present government in Afghanistan, and in large numbers of other countries round the world.

Hitler of course was elected. Is that really a significant difference?

What you wrote there about being willing to accept, when carried out by a government which you recognise, what I would define as terrorist acts, doesn't make you a "bad person", Ireland. I think though that it does make you a terrorist sympathiser.

I would strongly suspect that the use of torture by its opponents is far more likely to help Al Qaeda and all it stands for than significantly damage it.

The alternatve to torture is simple. It is to refuse to torture. There are other ways of carrying on a struggle.

In any case, within our legal system the use of torture is outlawed. It is a criminal act to torture a priosner, or to collude in torture on our behalf. If it is to be permitted, along with other acts of atrocity, it is our right as citizens of a democracy to be allowed to approve this change in our legal system, and in the case of most countries, to withdraw from the treaty obligations which confirm and underpin this outlawing of the practice.