Reply #42: It's not hypothetical - Harris is advocating the torture of Khalid

[muriel_volestrangler]

Sheikh Mohammed, now, in real life. He says so.

Given the damage we were willing to cause to the bodies and minds of innocent children in Afghanistan and Iraq, our disavowal of torture in the case of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed seems perverse. If there is even one chance in a million that he will tell us something under torture that will lead to the further dismantling of Al Qaeda, it seems that we should use every means at our disposal to get him talking.

Not because he knows there's a ticking bomb, in the cliche for this argument; because there's a small possibility Mohammed might have some useful information. And he says before this that he he is not against war itself.

You say: "presumably methods could be perfected to achieve the desired results, i.e., the "truth pill"". Why do you presume this? Is that more worthy of presumption than that a cheap, plentiful way of extracting electricity from sunlight will solve the energy crisis next year? Both are things people have tried to invent, but no-one has succeeded. Why presume a deus ex machina for how to extract information for terrorists?