Reply #20: That's why I said only under the most extreme hypothetical situation [View All]

It's almost impossible to imagine one. As CJCrane pointed out upthread, if you have the person in custody, you can probably get the information other ways. The entire discussion of the scenario is intended to get the public to endorse torture, and it hasn't just been spouted by Cheney. I think within academia, Alan Dershowitz was the main person floating the idea.

That said, I was in lower Manhattan on 9/11, and am a New Yorker. On purely hypothetical terms, if I had to balance torturing one person against what happened that day and the number of people who died, I'd choose the torture.

As I said, the torturer would have to accept the consequences of his choice, and society would have to speak through the legal system to condemn it.