That although he understands these are monstrous acts, there’s a part of his heart that will leap to excuse the torturer the moment he’s convinced that he is in danger. He has admitted as much.

Sorry, I should have said ‘almost admitted as much’. I don’t know of any other way to parse lines like: “What is not clear to me, is that waterboarding, under certain limited conditions, IS NOT WARRANTED,” or “possibly condemning it or, at the very least, CONDEMNING IT UNDER MOST CIRCUMSTANCES.” (My emphasis.)

Of course he ignores you. There’s no honestly contrary response to your words that isn’t completely disingenuous.

And there, in a nutshell, is our trepid troll, BLT. He cannot respond because he has nothing, other than his fascination with that fearful timebomb. He is mesmerized by this fallacy; it has cast a spell on him.

We’ve tried our best to shoot down that scenario, but BLT’s dread of it is too great for us. And I suspect a desire for revenge has a grip on him too.

He’s just not honest enough with himself to come out and admit this: that the anxiety and anger are too much and that these are enough for him to forgive the unforgivable. That although he understands these are monstrous acts, there’s a part of his heart that will leap to excuse the torturer the moment he’s convinced that he is in danger. He has admitted as much.

What we see here is a form of evil, and I use that word advisedly. It’s not the twirl-moustache villainous kind of evil, but that banal, mundane, everyday kind that gradually eats good people alive. It is the evil of men who stand by and do nothing while others do bad things in his name.

Once you can justify and excuse atrocity in one limited and contrived set of circumstances then it is possible to expand that to other situations. Soon you are compromised and you have become another Robespierre–a one-time idealist who now excuses atrocity and promotes it with little restraint.

It is why we define torture as a bright line that we should not cross. Not even in the most contrived of circumstances. Once that line is crossed, there are no longer any limits.

If you are truly evolving your opinions, then you do so at a glacial rate, because I see little or no change. The same old ticking timebomb scenario trots off your tongue each time we go here, even though you have had many clear explanations as to the fallacy of the scenario. You appear to have ignored all the utilitarian and historical arguments presented to you. (Did you ever read up on the Portugese counterinsurgency experience as I suggested in a previous thread?)

Each time we discuss this you return to your favourite thought experiment. You will not give up your fixation on that damned timebomb. And in defiance of all the rules for winning friends and influencing people, you continue to make snide insinuations about the anti-torture brigade wanting to hold hands with terrorists.

Can you not see that this is not the behaviour of a person who is edging away from torture? Your obtuseness suggests someone who has gone the opposite way. It screams ‘troll’–someone who knows he is pushing our buttons and can’t resist jamming his fingers into them. Is it any wonder that I get irritated enough to lose my temper and give you a piece of my mind?

Look BLT, I lived for years under the threat of being blown to pieces by Irishmen every time I stepped on a train or walked through a public place. It was a clear and present danger. People lost their lives. And as a result I swam in a culture inured to security alerts. And yet despite my anger at the killers I was never so afeared that I was prepared to cross that line and advocate immoral acts.

Sadly, others were. I knew some people who desired that atrocities, such as torture, be meted out on terrorists. They were the same people who cheered on the Gibraltar executions. And every one of them was clearly more interested in exacting revenge than in justice. Whenever I see pro-torture arguments deployed, they always smell of reprisal. Is this what is holding you back from path of righteousness? Is it that you do cannot let go of the desire to retaliate?

Just read what you have written here and in other threads. One theme that is repeated time and again is that you can’t believe we haven’t seriously considered torture as a viable technique. That we haven’t seen the merits, the ‘appeal’ (for want of a better term) of waterboarding.

Well, we have, and it frightens us, for all the many reasons we have given, and for one more reason: I am more afraid of torture in the hands of my government than I am concerned about a legion of terrorists. You should be too.

It’s not enough to say you are ‘leaning’ to our point of view. These are dark days. Your government is actively torturing and trying to persuade the world it is not with lies and silky words. It’s time to shit or get off the pot. Get a spine, man, and make up your mind one way or the other. And do it before it’s too late.

Yeah, those pixels just reach out and THERE’S NOTHING YOU CAN DO TO STOP THEM FROM HOLDING YOU DOWN AND BRINGING YOU TO THE BRINK OF DEATH.

And then the toaster-oven dings. Nachos!

What you’ve witnessed, and recklessly labeled as the behavior/rhetoric of a “spineless toad” is the evolution of thought. Some of my fellow conservatives are stubbornly defending the issue without even giving any consideration whatsover to the other side of the issue. So now that I am showing signs of flexibility and open-mindedness, I’m being psychologically waterboarded.

“Poor” is an interesting choice of adjectives to describe someone plotting to kill you and your family. Such a choice of words speaks volumes.

As it should. It was a deliberate choice. Because right now I don’t know who the heck this torture victim is. How do I know he’s plotting to kill me? How do I know he knows anything about a plot? How do I know he’s a terrorist at all? How can I trust the information that comes out of him? How can I trust your characterisation of him as a plotter? How do I know he’s not the victim of some Kafkaesque profiling operation that has swept up some innocent? At present I only have your word to go on that he’s a bad guy at all, and frankly your word is suspect.

And even if I bought into all your assumptions I still wouldn’t torture. Because as AG pointed out above, the flaw of the ‘ticking timebomb scenario’ is that it assumes *a priori* knowledge. It is a situation so contrived that it assumes I must have knowledge of a threat sufficient to protect myself against it without recourse to torture. In such a circumstance, the only reason to torture would be out of revenge or pure sadism.

It suggests that even though you have apparently lived under conditions that one would assume would ground you in reality, reality must not have fully taken hold of your senses.

Or it suggests that like most people living in wartime I made a realistic assessment of the threat and decided that compromising principle was not worth the purported improvement in security. “Those who would sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither…” and so on.

In any case, I have never advocated for waterboarding, and have never recommended it. I have only admitted to thinking about the issue, mulling it over in my mind, if you will, which is what everybody should do before supporting it or condemning it.

I’m sorry, BLT, but I have to call bullshit. You have on more than one thread here clearly advocated for torture, time and again posing these little thought games about ticking timebombs, or insinuating that folks against torture are supporting jihadists. It is difficult for any observer not to conclude what your true inclinations are. What frightens me is that we appear to be able to see this clearer than you.

Yours are not the words of an agnostic mulling it over. They are the words of a spineless toad who doesn’t have the courage of his convictions to openly say what he believes, because he knows it would reveal him to be a monster.

Now I’ve had enough of you. Kindly go away.

It suggests that even though you have apparently lived under conditions that one would assume would ground you in reality, reality must not have fully taken hold of your senses.

In any case, I have never advocated for waterboarding, and have never recommended it. I have only admitted to thinking about the issue, mulling it over in my mind, if you will, which is what everybody should do before supporting it or condemning it.

In other words, I have been there. Done that. Got the T-shirt.

If the threat were more real to you, if you had present, specific information that an attack were planned on you and members of your own family

Has it ever occurred to you that if I had such specific information my priority would be in improving my family’s personal security, not torturing some poor bastard. Christ! What fever dreams you people have!

Children should be left alone to be children. … And obviously they should not be involved, directly, or indirectly in any effort to get information out of terrorists or to circumvent a planned terrorist attack.

“Why so squeamish, Dr BLT? If raping one child could save the lives of millions, and your family, why not do it? If you are not prepared to rape a single child to protect your nation, you are objectively a supporter of the jihadis. You wish to sit around the campfire with them, holding hands and singing.”

You see, Doctor, when someone crosses that bright line that separates non-torturers from torturers, they shock my conscience every bit as vividly as the suggestion of child-rape shocks yours. And when someone insinuates that your dislike of torture makes you a terrorist sympathiser, I find that repugnant and vile. You have to be a special kind of scum to accuse someone so.

You still haven’t answered my earlier question. Who goes around holding hands with terrorists? Who are these imaginary strawliberals? Why on Earth do you trot them out as if they represent the true beliefs of the liberal polity?

If the threat were more real to you, if you had present, specific information that an attack were planned on you and members of your own family, and an agent of our government wanted to use the technique, would you be so quick to judge that agent and would you be so quick to judge our government? Please be honest. I think not.

You think wrong. And there lies the difference between men of conscience and spineless jellies who live in fear of the state enemy de nos jours. If a policy represents bad intelligence practice, if it hurts my country’s reputation and its ability to gain international support for counterterrorist action, if it becomes a rallying cry for the enemy, a recruiting slogan, creating blowback that ultimately puts my family in greater danger, then I would not condone it. In fact I would impeach my government to prevent it.

What is not clear to me, is that waterboarding, under certain limited conditions, is not warranted to protect ourselves, our neighbors, and our children. I have not declared this to be the case, but I am weighing it over in my mind.

I believe you are being less than honest with us. Too much that you have said indicates that you have already made up your mind. Someone who was truly agnostic on the issue would not state: “I know that sitting around holding hands and singing around a campfire with those who want to wipe us off the face of the earth in very cruel and unusual ways just won’t do as a protective measure, or as a sufficient means of securing valuable information towards that end.”

Those are the words of someone inclined to approve of torture. I believe you argue in bad faith.

That’s called the “ticking time bomb” scenario, and there are several flaws with such a conceptualization. Among them is the fact that such a situation has many, many assumptions (that have, incidentally, yet to be realized in the real world) that would apply to the use of torture in one specific, extremely hypothetical situation, but is being used broadly to justify institutionalized torture.

Also, I’d like to point out, given your reluctance to involve children, that the people who have seriously argued in favor of the executive prerogative to torture, the same people you’d consider entrusting to torture, have said that it is A-OK with them to crush the testicles of a person’s child in order to obtain information from that person. That was John Yoo, by the way.

So, to answer the thrust of your question, yes, I would be very quick to judge the agent, because it’s unambiguously torture and, therefore, wrong. Our hypothetical agent would have to trust in the mercy of our justice system (there is such a thing as mitigating circumstances, after all, for a reason), but he should live with the consequences of his actions. Torture, like war, is rarely the expediency leaders think it is. The cost is always more than you think it’s going to be.

And I’ll tell you this: I would have more mercy for the agent making a snap decision in the field, even one that I find morally repugnant, than I would — and do — for any government that would systematically implement torture as a routine means of interrogation, or that would retain the legal option to crush the testicles of a child in order to get information from a parent. Conservatives supposedly value the lessons of history. If that’s the case then why, oh why, are they suddenly ignoring them in favor of playing with this kind of fire? There is ample record of what happens to regimes that let this in the door, and none of them end well. I mean, wasn’t one of the GOP talking points against Saddam Hussein that he was a torturing monster?

As a final note, and not directed at BLT necessarily, is that I can recall several times where liberals are accused of everything from “moral relativism” to “moral bankrupcy.” It’s usually pretty easy to ignore this, especially when accompanied by the thumping of Bibles. But when those same people start advocating torture, it’s the same old “those rules don’t apply to us” crap. Which is, in a wingnutshell, from pre-emptive military strikes, to torture, to the whole goddamned jingoist plutocratic war machine of the authoritarian right, what is exactly wrong with most modern so-called conservatives. If they don’t purge that toxin from their ranks in the next generation, they deserve every schadenfreude-rich implosion they get. Pass me the fucking popcorn.

Apologies for threadjacking the snark, but just when I think my anger reserves are tapped out, something like this comes up and gets my glands in a dander. Going back to lurkmode now. Hey! That Jonah! What a douche!

My parents paid me a dollar for every book of the Bible I read. By the time I reached the New Testament, I had carved out a whole new definition of speed reading. So by this time, all I could think about was the money. Hence, the Old Testament, and the eye-for-an-eye approach had a greater influence upon me.

When I became an adult, I got a BA in Biblical and Religious Studies, gaining just enough knowledge to render me a danger with the scriptures.

I never threw out my faith, but was “converted” to psychology when I realized that a strict interpretation of scripture contributed to many people in the church suffering from severe psychiatric problems.

There’s a difference between wholeheartedly embracing waterboarding, and weighing it over on the way to possibly condemning it or, at the very least, condemning it under most circumstances.

What is not clear to me, is that waterboarding, under certain limited conditions, is not warranted to protect ourselves, our neighbors, and our children. I have not declared this to be the case, but I am weighing it over in my mind. Be honest. Some of you have also struggled with the issue before making a decision.

If the threat were more real to you, if you had present, specific information that an attack were planned on you and members of your own family, and an agent of our government wanted to use the technique, would you be so quick to judge that agent and would you be so quick to judge our government? Please be honest. I think not.

the only reason for this to go on is to keep conservatives from admitting they were wrong.

Not the only reason, surely? Is there not profit to be made from this war?

Bin Laden thinks he is doing God’s work.

I think about what Islamicist terrorists must tell themselves to justify to tehemsleves what they are doing. And I think of the guys in the “regular” army, pulling the trigger, dropping the bombs, releasing the missiles, giving the orders, and the justifications THEY must use, involving Mother, God and country, and I think these justifications must be very much the same.

(I would like to qualify this statement by saying that an insurgent in Iraq is much more likely to have seen his friends, family, home, life blown to pieces by the people he is fighting than the people he is fighting.)

One of the reasons I oppose the war is because I don’t want to see the US creating any more monsters, especially when you consider, at this point, that the only reason for this to go on is to keep conservatives from admitting they were wrong.

The horror!

As Robert points out, even if you subtracted the moral dimension, torture’s unreliability and the blowback are powerful arguments against it. I’ve warned BLT before about the historical impact of atrocity. About how it is the best recruiting and financing tool you can gift a terrorist or insurgent enemy.

Furthermore, a nation’s reputation and honour are priceless things, too valuable to squander. If America becomes synonymous with torture–as it is slowly becoming–then nations will stop cooperating with it. What liberal nation will extradite terrorists to the US if there is a suspicion they will be tortured? This kind of poison ultimately hurts America’s cause.

As El Cid and D.Sidhe point out, once you accept torture on any basis, you are on a slippery slope. Your moral core will be hollowed out. Once you have crossed that line, there are almost no limits to your behaviour. Anything becomes possible. Any sick act becomes imaginable, like the child-rape scenario outlined earlier. If the threat is sufficient to justify torture, at what point does coercion become too much for Dr BLT? Does he draw the line at raping a terrorist’s child? If so, why stop there? If one paedophile rape could save millions, is it not justifiable in BLT’s world?

Slippery slope compromises such deomstrate how an ostensibly liberal idealist like Robespierre could become one of the great butchers of history. I have no idea who Dr. BLT is. He may think himself a good person. But his ramblings about torture only demonstrate how far his morals have come adrift.

I feel sad for him. What a terrible fate.

It’s like I woke up one day to discover that people who believe that child rape is warranted under certain circumstances are being carefully listened to and their opinions seriously discussed.

But don’t you understand? If raping the child of a terrorist in front of him would persuade him to confess the location of a ticking time-bomb, then it is justified!

Yes, that’s the level of Jesuitical thinking we are dealing with here.

You’re not funny, you’re not pathetic, you’re not clever, provocative, or satirical, You are a moral coward, a vile bag of pus, excess human baggage. You are a walking argument for retroactive abortion.

Once you presume that torture is okay under certain circumstances, torturing someone innocent, torturing the innocent family of a terrorist, torturing the family of someone innocent, killing the suspect, killing someone innocent, killing the family of someone innocent, torturing and killing masses of innocent people, all of this becomes a simple mistake, at worst a “lapse in judgment”. It’s no longer a war crime, possibly not even a crime of any sort. Considering how willing we are to write off “collateral damage” and “friendly fire”, I have a hard time imagining that anyone will bother with real efforts to prevent “interrogation mishaps”.

Even if there’s nothing inside you that recognizes torture as inherently wrong, at that point you should be considering some self interest. You’d better hope that the government you consider incapable of administering taxes and environmental regulations properly doesn’t start making “mistakes” in your direction. You’d better hope the cops who give you speeding tickets when you’re positive you weren’t speeding don’t start accusing you of anything else.

And yet, I’m appalled that we even have to resort to arguments about *when* torture is wrong, and what torture means. I’m revolted that we have to resort to trying to convince some people that if nothing else torture is bad because they might torture *you*. The whole thing just genuinely baffles me. It’s like I woke up one day to discover that people who believe that child rape is warranted under certain circumstances are being carefully listened to and their opinions seriously discussed.