Posted on 05/15/2009 5:19:06 AM PDT by kellynla
WASHINGTON -- Earlier this month, I wrote a column outlining two exceptions to the no-torture rule: the ticking time bomb scenario and its less extreme variant in which a high-value terrorist refuses to divulge crucial information that could save innocent lives. The column elicited protest and opposition that were, shall we say, spirited.
And occasionally stupid. Dan Froomkin, writing for washingtonpost.com and echoing a common meme among my critics, asserted that "the ticking time bomb scenario only exists in two places: On TV and in the dark fantasies of power-crazed and morally deficient authoritarians." (He later helpfully suggested that my moral deficiencies derived from "watching TV and fantasizing about being Jack Bauer.")
On Oct. 9, 1994, Israeli Cpl. Nachshon Waxman was kidnapped by Palestinian terrorists. The Israelis captured the driver of the car. He was interrogated with methods so brutal that they violated Israel's existing 1987 interrogation guidelines, which themselves were revoked in 1999 by the Israeli Supreme Court as unconscionably harsh. The Israeli prime minister who ordered, as we now say, this enhanced interrogation explained without apology: "If we'd been so careful to follow the ('87) Landau Commission (guidelines), we would never have found out where Waxman was being held."
Who was that prime minister? Yitzhak Rabin, Nobel Peace laureate. (The fact that Waxman died in the rescue raid compounds the tragedy but changes nothing of Rabin's moral calculus.)
That moral calculus is important. Even John McCain says that in ticking time bomb scenarios you "do what you have to do." The no-torture principle is not inviolable. One therefore has to think about what kind of transgressive interrogation might be permissible in the less pristine circumstance of the high-value terrorist who knows about less imminent attacks. (By the way, I've never seen five seconds of "24.")
(Excerpt) Read more at realclearpolitics.com ...
incorrect link for Krauthammer piece
Were the folks at the WTC tortured enough to suit the pig RATS?
Here’s the right one:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2009/05/14/ST2009051403604.html
Oh, okay...
thanks
here ya go
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/printpage/?url=http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/05/15/the_torture_debate_continued_96496.html
admin moderator
Please correct the link
Thanks
Well if I were the gatekeeper at Dark Fantasies of Power-Crazed and Morally Deficient Authoritarians Club, I’d give Krauthammer a free pass every Saturday, but he’s right as usual here. Those who criticize Krauthammer on this are engaging in another sort of fantasy: that it’s a mathematically perfect world and we can always run messy situations through ideal formulas and come up with perfect solutions. When even Gandhi would have twisted their arms for information about mass terror plots.
“those favoring harsh interrogation at the time included Alan Dershowitz, Mark Bowden and Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter.”
I remember how amazed I was that even the great civil rights advocate Alan Dershowitz favored EIT.
How many exceptions are there to "...Shall not be infringed."?
Certainly the doofusses who can find penumbras and emanations to justify killing your own baby can find justification for hurting people who want to indescriminately KILL us.
The power that evil men have in this world does not extend to damning us. It is a mistake to grant them that power. No earthly goal being sought through hellish evil is worth the candle, and no merit or worth of any kind can survive the procedure. If you justify torture as expedient you will soon find murder even more expedient. If you find those expedient directed at evil enemies you will find it even more expedient to not need to bother about being sure of that. We know where that whole process goes, and it goes straight to hell.
The whole idea that the secret of power lies in evil or that wars can be won in torture chambers, is false from top to bottom. Those attempting it do not deserve "saving" and their achieving their ends is not choiceworthy itself. Nothing any of you say or do will ever force any of us to support torture. Instead you simply make yourself an enemy of all mankind. (A group that can be as restricted as you please; you can leave it at any time to enlist in the legions of hell).
“No, there are no exceptions.”
In that case, it’s a good thing that waterboarding isn’t torture.
Now you can go to sleep every night with a clear conscience.
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