"I have no problem with the torture of those who are responsible for presenting the world with 3000 dead Mai Lai, so people like them do not do it again " But since My Lai was an American atrocity who would have been the appropriate person to torture - the President as Supreme Commander, on the principle "the buck stops here"? Colin Powell for being involved in the attempted cover up?

I note, though, that it's moved on from the idea that torture is OK in a fancied situation where it might be a way of stopping a bomb going off, to it being as as an appropriate way of punishing people guilty of an atrocity. The slippery slope in action.

I'd say that one of the basic requirments for calling a society civilised is that it does not tolerate torture. No matter what.