How does someone 'know' for sure that the 'terrorist' holds valuable information that justifies

[TheCoxwain]

torture.. and you can only get that information using torture.


Isnt that argument like placing a cart before a horse?

[tularetom]

1. Torture 'em all and let God sort it out later

[Lance_Boyle]

2. Um, because they're brown and talk about Allah.

Duh.

[HopeHoops]

3. They have a little red button that pops up when they are ready to talk.

Wait, is that terrorists or something else I'm thinking about?

:shrug:

[Echo In Light]

4. Our govt are the terrorists anyhow, so they're not even actually looking for "terrorists."

Torture was used per the PNAC blueprint: stir up the hornets nest in the mideast to ensure chaos/conflict, which is what an empire hell bent of expansion requires to spin in their own media as being 'retaliatory,' even tho it's naked aggression. It's like a more elaborate way of, say, the cops who need to plant a gun on someone they illegally killed in order to say, well, ya know, he had a gun, and shot first.

[gratuitous]

5. And, if you know all this . . .

It sort of makes you wonder how the prospective torturers can know all this about their captive but fail to know anything about his associates, his habits, and his recent movements. Unless, of course, we're going to posit a cooperative terrorist who just shows up at Jack Bauer's office, volunteers all kinds of self-damning information, but clams up when it gets to the point of where and when the ticking time bomb is going to go off.

Yeah, this is a highly realistic scenario.

[endarkenment]

6. You torture them until they tell you what you know they know

thus proving that they knew it. See drowning witches as a test of guilt.