re: #432 garhighway

If you have backpedalled from “it never works” to “it doesn’t work” that’s progress, I guess.

I don’t think that is a backpedal. It’s an acknowledgement that it works.

But I would respectfully suggest that there is a difference between it working from time to time (no doubt people have, under torture, said true things) to it being reliable. If torture gets you truth sometimes and falsity sometimes, with no accurate predictor of which you are getting or which you are going to get, I would respectfully suggest that it is unreliable. At which point you have to ask yourself whether it is worth the candle? Is it worth it for us to violate our own laws, international law, and our own principles to use a technique that fails at its essential mission? Is the collateral damage it causes us worth whatever benefit it gains us? Unless your view is that we have so badly shit the bed in terms of our international reputation that any additional incremental damage thereto is just icing on the cake and inconsequential.

There are a lot of factors to consider but I’ll agree that is the basis of the argument. Even if you say that it doesn’t work well you still have to admit that it works. That’s when you have to ask if it’s worth it in addition to trying to nail down what techniques are actual “torture” and which aren’t.

So we don’t have to rehash the entire argument again how about I boil my stance down to the decision of what techniques that we use should be left up to the voters which is what I believe happened in 2008. I’m content to leave the decision to the majority.