Cultural Offering notes an article by law professor and author Stephen L. Carter on the Senate Intelligence Report authors' failure to bother with interviewing top CIA officials. [Getting the other side of the story is always such a bother when you know which result you're after.]
The debate on torture and interrogation techniques brings us to an obvious question:
"If Practice A (e.g. water-boarding) is impermissible, then what is the most severe interrogation practice which would be permissible?"
I assume it isn't a cup of tea and gentle questioning.
Sometimes the ends do justify the means. When we watch the Allied shelling of Normandy to liberate France we know that not all of those shells were hitting German troops.
It is good that we have revulsion at even the word "torture." That reflects a healthy instinct and yet many of us who do not want to condone torture leave the door open a crack for an extreme case where there are powerful reasons to believe that a suspect might be able to provide information which could prevent a "dirty" bomb (or worse) from going off in downtown Chicago or L.A.
That "permission in the extreme" sounds like an easy solution but the world is a messy and rough neighborhood. I'm sure that CIA operatives would counter by noting you often don't know in advance how much information a suspect possesses.
Much of this gets down to another troubling question: How much risk are we willing to tolerate?
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