Re:US Senate Report on CIA Detention and Interrogation Program
by anigbrowl on Tuesday December 09, 2014 @04:47PM
(#8726030)
I'm gonna say yes - not killing them in cold blood execution style but in the sense of them being a valid target. If you're in a position to torture/rape someone, you've already neutralized them as a threat by capturing them. Shooting or bombing someone is not necessarily OK, but while the person is at liberty they could in theory be about to shoot your or engineer some other sort of attack - the operation to assassinate Admiral Yamamoto in WW2 being a good example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Vengeance
On the other hand, torture isn't something that people do because they feel they have to, but rather because they can. Since all the accumulated evidence to points to it being a poor way to to gather intelligence information, it's hard to avoid the conclusion that it's just way of being vindictive or sadistic instead, something that we find deplorable in other contexts. I think it's considered deplorable because such feelings are quite common but the majority of us make the effort not to act upon them.
On the other hand, torture isn't something that people do because they feel they have to, but rather because they can. Since all the accumulated evidence to points to it being a poor way to to gather intelligence information, it's hard to avoid the conclusion that it's just way of being vindictive or sadistic instead, something that we find deplorable in other contexts. I think it's considered deplorable because such feelings are quite common but the majority of us make the effort not to act upon them.