re: #30 Dr Lizardo

Ah, the old ‘ticking time-bomb’ scenario.

So, let’s say I put a 500 Kt device in Akron, OH, and it’s set to go off in one hour. You (the security services) know that I have a nuke that’s gonna go off sometime during the day. You capture me….I play you with for about 20 minutes, then you torture me. I tell you, “Geez, Louise….it’s in Boston, running around in a rented delivery van. A Ryder. My buddy X is driving it.”

So, in the 40 minutes it takes you (the security services) to mobilize and start looking at every Ryder van (or whatever I say) in Boston….

Boom.

That’s why that scenario is a total crock. A truly dedicated and committed terrorist will simply lie to his interrogators in order to throw them off the trail. A truly dedicated terrorist may well have already undergone the type of training administered to soldiers that helps them resist torture in the hands of their foes. End result: He (or she) achieves their objective and the security services now look like a bunch of damned fools.

It always seems that the “ticking bomb” scenario is set in such a fashion that there’s plenty of time to torture the terrorist, find the bomb, and defuse it. No question give to what happens if the terrorist keeps quiet, lies to them, or just decides that being tortured to death is acceptable if the bomb still goes off.