Quote Originally Posted by Sasquatch
Gnostic Yevon -- While I do agree with your post, your "rules" concerning the validation of the use of torture could cause some problems. In #2, you mention that you'd have to convince a military judge that there's good reason to suspect an imminent terrorist attack. If a terrorist attack is imminent, should we be spending time on courts marshall and other court proceedings, convincing people left and right that it should be done? Of course, we should be as sure as possible about the accuracy of the information we could extract from the suspect, but, simply put, s*** happens. Nobody wants innocent people to be subjected to cruel interrogation techniques, but I would rather 1, or 10, or 100 innocent men be tortured than be partially responsible for the loss of thousands of lives.
Well, I wasn't necessarily talking about a trial, just some sort of procedure so that it doesn't turn into the standard excuse. Without some sort of controls, I fear that "immenant threat" would be called anytime a person decides they want to torture a suspect, or if a person gets caught doing so. The problem is that without controls on the torture of suspects, I could technically beat up anybody in a prison, and then later say that "it was to prevent a terrorist attack". Such things happen regularly in dictatorships.

Now, you are right that it's better to not be going though a month long court trial if the bomb is already planted somewhere. But I think there would be enough time to go to a Millitary Judge and say "we know that there's a bomb planted somewhere in the USA. We know that this prisoner is in al-qaida." In other words, the standard should be somewhere lower than a search warrant. I don't think that's unreasonable. I'm not even asking that they use a full court trial or give him a lawyer to defend himself.