What's wrong with open torture policy

[struggle4progress]

Peter Erich
Royal palm beach
Posted October 1 2006

The debate about whether to torture, how much torture is torture, or even if what we all know is torture should be called torture has so far avoided the most basic and important question: Who is deciding who should be tortured? ...

And there lies the problem: If we are so smart going into the selection of those we wiretap, imprison, and torture that we know are terrorists and wannabes, why are we still having such a hard time getting them all? Oh wait; we have to lock them up and torture them to find out what they are plotting. Hmm, that little piece of information seems to be missing from our fantastic intelligence operations ...

You know, if you tried to apply that logic to simple police work, we could catch all the criminals before they ever act simply by grabbing all the "known" criminal associates, family members and undesirables. That worked so well in South Africa, Germany, North Korea and the USSR that it would have to work here, too! Wouldn't it?

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/opinion/letters/sfl-pbmail891oct01,0,4601672.story?coll=sfla-news-letters

[lvx35]

1. exactly! I had to explain something like that to a coworker today. nt