Is it worse than members of our armed forces are subjected to? Is it worse than having to sit through an Osama speech justifying Wright’s sermons?

I am unaware that the UN and its minions ruled the US or were taken seriously anywhere in the civilized world. Perhaps our opponents of all stripes haven’t noticed the UN dictates. I for one believe the US has made a major mistake in not enforcing the Geneva Accords regulations regarding those who are illegal combatants. Under Article IV treatment far worse than torture is authorized. Of course perhaps Mr. Moran would rather we summarily execute these beasts. I know I would-after they are thoroughly questioned.

major physical impairment

You’re absolutely right. It only hurts a little so it’s okay.

Some way has to be found to separate the wheat from the chaff. What way is that?

“That they are condemned without trial as terrorists is a given—caught in the act, so to speak—so they must take their chances. Deep interrogation is one of those chances.”

Because they were caught in the act: Standing on a desert sanddune, firing hot lead at US Soldiers, screaming “Death to Amerika!!” as our guys dive-tackled them from behind, knocjing the still-smoking weapon out of their clutching hands as the caught-in-the-act coward is dragged off to meet their well-deserved fate.

-or-

bounty hunters dumped the bound and blindfolded bodies of random people (or people they had a grudge against) at the feet of US soldiers and told us they were terrorists. They did it for revenge, they did it for cash . . . but regardless of their motives, we blindly assumed they were telling the truth and dragged the innocent off to their not-deserved fate. No caught-in-the-act, no “troops kick the door down as they are building a bomb”, no evidence at all except the word of a mercenary.

Would scenario #2 change your opinion? If the people in Gitmo really HAD been “caught red handed”, why have we let the vast majority go free (after years in prison and interrogation)? Here’s some DOD documentation that was forced to be made public of the tribunals discussing the “evidence” against them:

http://www.dod.mil/pubs/foi/detainees/csrt/index.html

if you don’t want to look through the hundreds of pages (although the complete lack of evidence starts on page one of the 1st set of documents), here’s a nice summary in the National Journal:

http://nationaljournal.com/about/njweekly/stories/2006/0203nj4.htm

some choice quotes:
“Baher Azmy of Seton Hall Law School represents Murat Kurnaz, a Turk who is at Guantanamo. “The government has no case against him,” Azmy says. Kurnaz was plucked off a bus in Pakistan and subsequently accused of being friends with a suicide bomber. The government did not tell Kurnaz’s tribunal that his friend is alive and therefore could not be the referenced suicide bomber. In March, Kurnaz’s file was accidentally, and briefly, declassified: According to the Washington Post, it consisted of memos from domestic and foreign intelligence sources stating that Kurnaz posed no threat. The file, however, contained one anonymous memo contradicting the rest and claiming he was connected to Al Qaeda. In January 2005, a federal judge singled out Kurnaz’s case as evidence of the lack of due process in the Guantanamo tribunals. The judge said that his tribunal had ignored exculpatory evidence and relied instead on the single anonymous memo that was not credible.”
. . .
“The filtering process for deciding who was sent to Guantanamo wasn’t perfect, Jacobson said, nor should it have been. To protect U.S. soldiers still fighting in Afghanistan it was better to err on the side of caution and to send more, rather than fewer, men to Guantanamo. “If it’s the other way around, then you’re doing it wrong.”

But nuance didn’t exactly survive the air convoys to Cuba. The men in the orange jumpsuits, President Bush said, were terrorists. They were the most dangerous, best-trained, vicious killers on the face of the earth, Rumsfeld said. They were so vicious, if given the chance they would gnaw through the hydraulic lines of a C-17 while they were being flown to Cuba, said Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

But the CIA didn’t see it that way. By the fall of 2002, it was common knowledge around CIA circles that fewer than 10 percent of Guantanamo’s prisoners were high-value terrorist operatives, according to Michael Scheuer who headed the agency’s bin Laden unit through 1999 and resigned in 2004. Most of the men were probably foot soldiers at best, he said, who were “going to know absolutely nothing about terrorism.” Guantanamo prisoners might be pumped for information about how they learned to fight, which could help American soldiers facing trained Islamic insurgencies. But the Defense Department and FBI interrogators at Guantanamo were interested more in catastrophic terrorism than in combat practicalities. They kept asking “every one of these guys about 9/11 and when was the next attack,” questions most of these low-level prisoners couldn’t answer, Scheuer said.

Even as the CIA was deciding that most of the prisoners at Guantanamo didn’t have much to say, Pentagon officials were getting frustrated with how little the detainees were saying. So they ramped up the pressure and gave interrogators more license.”

Oops. To steal a line out a Tarrintino movie: “If you beat this guy enough he’ll tell you he started the Chicago fire, but that don’t necessarily make it so.”

Torturing actual criminals is morally suspect to begin with. Torturing innocent people . . . well, that’s just damn disgusting.

“No, that’s NOT the question—that’s the question that makes torture look excusable. Let me ask you the same question with one addition:
“The question is if lives are NOT saved by torturing for information, should one refrain because of moral inhibitions?”
I hope you answered “of course.”

Interrogators have a hard choice to make, and it is quite possible that they would pick the wrong man to undergo deep interrogation out of a gaggle of terrorist captives.

That they are condemned without trial as terrorists is a given–caught in the act, so to speak–so they must take their chances. Deep interrogation is one of those chances.

The interrogators pick another captive– hopefully a better choice this time, or they are back to square one again. One bit of info they may acquire is the ID of the leader of the gaggle–possibly the most productive person of the bunch.

Someone said in the past that to forbid any form of torture is to condemn to death any torture victim after he has given up his all. This removes the victim from testifying against the interrogators later on. “He died trying to escape!” they report.

But then, I read too much fiction.

many of the “pro-torture” arguments made above by commenters are logically incoherent and/or factually inaccurate.

the comments (many more than you usually get) are running pretty heavily against your position.

a sincere question: would you consider writing a post that seeks to explain how “your crowd” (or perhaps “your former crowd”) came to hold these very extreme and revolting positions. because i hear only self-identified righties speaking so enthusiastically about water-boarding. i just don’t understand.

You again? I thought you were never coming back?

You’re the one who said bye bye - not me. How can it possibly be “arrogant” if all I’m doing is helping you keep your promise?

ed.