A. People who are tortured will usually admit to anything. Such confessions, on their own, are valueless.
B. However, a tortured person may also give you information that can be investigated and verified independently.
C. If the person is innocent, you will have imposed horrible suffering unjustly.
D. Torture is, to say the least, cruel and unusual.
President Bush is harping on point B.
In philosophical circles, point B comes up in the "ticking bomb" dilemma, in which many innocent lives will be lost unless the terrorist is tortured into revealing the location of the ticking bomb. This sort of thing happens constantly to Jack Bauer on "24".
Jack Bauer,
In "24" hours,
must always act with urgency.
Is it an error
To equate the war on terror
With an ethical emergency?
1 comment:
"Is it an error
To equate the war on terror
With an ethical emergency?"
Not when you can't differentiate between a war and an emergency. Any bomb (or airplane) anywhere could be the one that's ticking... and you may not even know it.
Such is the nature
Of the war on terror.
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