re: #49 Obdicut

Waterboarding and military action have nothing to do with each other, though.

The point of killing people is to kill them. The point of torturing people is to get information out of them. It’s a stupid tactic, since other interrogative methods work better, and because in order to do it you need torturers. A torturer is a lot more twisted thing than a soldier is.

Well, I think in the days after 9-11 we were more interested in learning what Al Qaeda was up to. Once you capture somebody and interrogate them (regardless of method) you have to figure out what to do with them when you’re done. Anyone we want intel from these days goes off to a secret prison of rendered to Lithuania or Thailand (or whatever) and nobody will ever know about it.
Today we have a good idea of what Al Qaeda is up to and even a big fish like Bin Laden can just be killed outright and it’s not much of a problem.