no
it trivializes and dismisses the actual gravity and moral ambiguity faced by those put into a position of having to protect hundreds of thousands of innocent lives
Bullshit Nick:
WHAT moral ambiguity?
Are you referring to the kind of moral reasoning that justifies the murder of innocents to further a goal just because you feel the stakes are huge? Because THAT, my friend, is the moral position of the terrorists... that the END justifies the means.
Seriously... you think it is a valid argument to say we should DEFEND our principles and beliefs by ABANDONING our principles and beliefs?
There is no moral ambiguity... it is perfectly clear- as it was to the FBI who backed out, that what was being done was wrong.
You don't commission exculpatory legal "opinions" AFTER you do something unless it has occured to you that you could be prosecuted for what you have done.
The fact is that you can not torture without torturing innocents. Unlike the mythological ticking bomb scenario, in reality land YOU DON'T KNOW what any suspect does or does not know. If you did know what they know- there would be no need to torture them at all...
And because you don't know what they know you have no way of ascertaining if the informaiton you get is truthful or not.
The ticking bomb goes off because in torturing someone you got told 6 different stories and you don't have time to chase down all 6.
If torture "worked" then it should not have required 87 different sessions to find out everything Zubiyda knew...
And even if it DID work, that does not excuses it... US courts wil not admit even damning evidence that was obtained illegally.
Why is that? Because a government that need not follow any laws or rules of conduct is far more dangerous than letting a handful of criminals go, that's why.
Truth is- we tortured for the same fucking reason EVERYONE has always tortured... because those in power wanted to elicit false confessions to back their agenda... that's why.
That is the ONLY thing torture is good for- getting folks to swear they are a witch... even when they know they are not.
Sorry pal- your apology is what truly trivializes and dismisses the issues at hand.
Wrong is wrong. Torture is wrong.
It's NOT ambiguous- its one of the founding principles of the Constitution, and This nation has literally HUNG pepople for doing what Cheney endorsed being done.
And, no, "i was following orders" is NOT a valid defense- it wasn't valid at nuremburg, and its not valid now.
There is no evidence, anywhere, that torture saved a single life.
You can not defend moral ambiguity with ambiguous evidence- you must show concrete results... not some TV plotline, to warrant even the notion that compromising the law might be useful.
Oh- and BTW- game theory proves that torture and vendetta never win in the long haul.
Never.