Al-Qaeda suspects were brought to the 'point of death' during 'real torture' by CIA

[Fortinbras Armstrong]

31. So you hold US law in contempt. You take Himmler, Torquemada and Lavrenti Beria as role models.

If your rights under the law were to be abrogated, would you not be bothered by it?

In Robert Bolt's play, A Man For All Seasons, Richard Rich has just run off to inform on Thomas More to his enemies. Lady Alice, More's wife, tells More: Arrest him!

More: Why, what has he done?

Margaret (More's daughter): He's bad!

More: There is no law against that.

Will Roper (Margaret's fiancé): There is! God's law!

More: Then God can arrest him.

Alice: While you talk, he's gone!

More: And go he should, if he was the Devil himself, until he broke the law!

Roper: So now you'd give the Devil benefit of law!

More: Yes. What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?

Roper: I'd cut down every law in England to do that!

More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country's planted thick with laws from coast to coast– man's laws, not God's– and if you cut them down—and you're just the man to do it—do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake.

(On edit, I just found this bit on Youtube)

One reason I oppose torture is that if torture is acceptable, what is to stop them from torturing me? The Bushmen were moving in that direction, preferring that we have a police state:

• A state in which people can be accused of being "enemy combatants" and disappeared into night and fog

• A state in which torture is used on those suspected of terrorism (because, of course, people suspected of terrorism have no rights, including the right to be considered innocent until proven guilty)

• A state where the authorities can wiretap without warrants

If KSM gets his day in court, virtually all evidence against him would have to be thrown out because he was tortured. See Brown v. Mississippi, 297 U.S. 278 (1936), for the legal precedent.

Another reason for opposing torture is that it is unreliable. The person being tortured will say just about anything to make it stop. If I have you strapped down to a table, give me a small electric generating set, a couple of wires with clamps on the end, and within an hour or so, I will get you to admit to buggering your sister (whether or not you have a sister), setting the Reichstag fire, and assassinating George Washington.

There is one situation where torture will work quite reliably: When the torturer wants the victim to say a specific thing. A good example of that was Henry VIII's desire to support his trumped-up charge of adultery by Ann Boleyn. Four or five men, including Ann's brother, were tortured to get them to say that they had sexual relations with Ann. It worked very well as a means of getting perjured testimony. That's using an immoral act in order to procure an immoral end. Moreover, I do not see any moral or legal system in which suborning perjury is acceptable.

Speaking of moral systems, I should mention that I am a Catholic. According to the Constitution On the Church from the Second Vatican Council, Lumen Gentium, section 25, a teaching from a properly constituted ecumenical council (such as Vatican II) is infallible. Another of Vatican II's documents, Gaudium et Spes, section 27, says that torture is intrinsece malum -- "intrinsically evil". As Pope John Paul II wrote in his encyclical Veritatis Splendor, section 80, torture is one of a group of acts which are immoral

always and per se, in other words, on account of their very object, and quite apart from the ulterior intentions of the one acting and the circumstances. Consequently, without in the least denying the influence on morality exercised by circumstances and especially by intentions, the Church teaches that "there exist acts which per se and in themselves, independently of circumstances, are always seriously wrong by reason of their object".

Now, this argument is applicable only to Catholics, but virtually all ethical systems find torture to be evil.

One last thing to consider about torture is what it does to the torturer and those who support torturing. Nietzsche, in Beyond Good and Evil, wrote "He who fights too long against dragons becomes a dragon himself; and if you gaze too long into the abyss, the abyss will gaze into you".