http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/05/21/2228418/what-price-america-for-torture.html
"Even McCain concedes torture “sometimes produces good intelligence,” but the question is whether that intelligence is worth the price we pay for it. Absent the “ticking bomb” scenario so often evoked by torture enthusiasts (and has anyone ever seen that scenario outside an episode of 24?) it is hard to see how it could be.
The price, after all, is our national character, our good name, our reputation and reality as a nation of laws. The price is to become like Cuba, like Syria, like North Korea, like Iran, a nation of hoods and shackles and dungeons and disappearances. The price is to surrender any last remaining illusion that we are better than that.
Some, eager to have hands shiny with the blood of enemies, will consider it a bargain even at those prices. Expedience is their watchword. Let us torture to stop the ticking bomb. Let us torture to find the madman. Let us torture just to see what information we get.
But the struggle we wage is not simply a physical one, not simply a battle to save lives. No, this is a struggle between competing ways of seeing the world, a struggle of rival ideals. Some will say the stakes are too high for us to worry about venerating ideals.
Actually, they are too high not to."
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1 comment:
Mhmmm, well said, Mr. Pitts.
I miss 24, too...
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