re: #13 I’m a Mavrik!

I can imagine certain hypothetical situations where torture can elicit useful information, such as when the aim is to acquire very specific information about events otherwise well-known (e.g. we know that there is someone tied up in some house and she will die within x hours, and we don’t know the exact place… you get the drift). I can imagine that in some of these situations torture can be a lesser evil. Lesser. But evil.

So, at risk of downdings and for the sake of the argument I can admit that in very, very specific (and extremely rare and unlikely) scenarios torture can elicit probably useful information (and I would think none of these scenarios would correspond to the real life stuff these interrogators had to deal with) and could be deemed to be the way to proceed. What it should never be is legal. I.e. even if you use it as a lesser-evil method, you should still go to prison.

Yeah, legality. A lot of people don’t get what this is about.

Consider a scenario in which a terrorist wants to let a nuke go off in a densely populated city. He’s been captured, but there is an automated countdown and only he has the keys to neccessary to defuse the bomb.

He is willing to give you the keys. All he asks to happen before that is that you slaughter a newborn in front of his eyes.

Someone ask torture-lover O’Reilly what he would do.

The illusion of being in control.