Quote Originally Posted by Cloud No.9
but moral philosophy is what this is.

we are faced with two choices here. to let americans die but take the moral high ground and be better than our enemies. or torture these people (lets remember that torture is also useless) and be no better than them. and then what war are we fighting? are we in the moral right if we torture people? are we any better than these people if we drop to such a level? then what is this war for? freedom? justice? the rights of man? and we're going to win this by torture? what moral high ground is that?
How many more deaths should we absorb for the moral high ground? How many mothers should get flags and coffins because we're being moral? There is a difference between being moral and being stupid. And to my mind it would be stupid to let tens or even hundreds of soldiers die for the moral high ground, especially when that high ground was set by people who don't share the risks of the ones in battle. That's the problem. It would be one thing if US Army Generals and so on were saying that we shouldn't torture, and something completely different if it comes from Armchair Generals (like you and me) watching the war on CNN and saying that such things are deplorable, and that the soldiers should die rather than torture. If you'd ever been in combat, or had ever been to Iraq, you'd have a leg to stand on. But you're getting your info from TV (a channel 4 special) not experience.

And because it's the Army that has to deal with the consequences of the decision, the Army should decide the matter. To do otherwise seems like hypocracy. "Yeah you go fight, and fight in a way that doesn't look bad on my TV screen. And I don't care if you die doing it. I don't care if your best friend's life could be saved by getting intelligence from an Iraqi insurgent being kept up past bedtime, don't do it." That isn't fair. And the only way to make it fair would be for you, personally to join the millitary and head for Iraq. Honeslty it sounds more like Marie Antonette's clueless quote:
What, the people don't have bread? Then let them eat cake!