Talk of torture makes me shudder. How anyone could write such a long, drawn out, academic piece on the subject is beyond me. It's ghoulish.

However, I was attracted to the heading: "Torture produces terrorists". This, of course, is nonsense. Professor Manderson would have us believe that a "turning point in the lives of many Al-Qaida operatives was their imprisonment and torture..". They were only incarerated in the first place for failure to pay traffic fines, were they Professor?

This is putting the horse before the cart, and is as legitimate as the claim of a recent letter to the editor saying that it was no wonder people are terrorists when people like Kim Beazley called the London bombers 'animals'.

The Professor doesn't say how many terrorist were tortured before they committed their atrocities, or how many were not tortured before they committed atrocities. He can't, of course. But he should know that terrorists don't terrorise because of anything that has been done or said to them. They do it because they are religious maniacs with a hatred for anyone who is not also a religious maniac.

Yes Leigh those being tortured also shudder, involuntarily. But I agree with Manderson.

The fact that torture is being brought out in the open as an option for democratic government is an accident of history.

The US can (almost) openly sponsor torture and discuss the definition and legitimacy of torture, because:

- its the world's only superpower (most countries no longer have a choice of placing their faith in another superpower)
- hence the US has largely won the propaganda/information war
- neocons who currently dominate US foreign policy have an unflinching idea of the need for tough action
- the Christian right provides moral legitimacy for torture because:
- the issue is (almost exclusively) about torturing non Christians (ie Muslims).

I'm not denying that many countries do/have practiced torture openly (China repeatedly comes to mind) or that most countries do it quietly (eg. police "roughing up" suspects to ensure guilty pleas).

However we are talking about legal torture in a democratic country. The Australian debate about a torture option is completely derivative of the US debate about the ways and means of the War Against Terror. We wouldn't sink to such depths without the influence of Uncle Sam.

Australian lawyers and academics giving torture options a sympathetic airing are merely providing the kind of support traditionally performed by Australia (the little US ally) allowing US (sponsored) torturer's to continue their well paid duties.

Forgive me but at times for the greater good of a nation torture must be used or be there to be used.
We have followers of a dark, dismal, death loving religion, and I talk of only the fundamentalists here.
These gutless cowards will wrap a bomb belt around themselves, a woman or even a child. We, if we have a suspect who knows, need by any means to get this information to save innocent lives.
It's no good taking the high moral ground and allowing these murderers to kill our citizens.
Yes torture will demean us as a society in some ways - but consider the alternatives.
In WW1 submarines and their sinking of passenger liners was abhorant, in WW2 it was not seen as such, same as torture now.
Please if we gave torture away these cowardly suicide bombers and their totally craven handlers would see us completely gullible.
Which is worse torture to save innocent lives or have unarmed, unaware men, women and children blown to pieces?
Remember these same sub-humans have in the past laid siege to a children's school. These same uncivilised merciless killers have made girl's dolls and filled them with explosives. Apparently they have seen American servicemen/women giving these type dolls to Iraqi girls.
We are not dealing with decent, civilised, normal human beings here. numbat

I see that torture is discussed more in the context of terrorists rather than the in generality of control by the legally-powerful group not necessarily to provide information though that may be the excuse, but to frighten.
Since terrorists have been classed as scum by our opposition and since John Howard will not even talk with them to establish their reasons, rather Victorian I wonder if he enters rooms in which the table and chair legs are naked, and since terrorists have no clear definition, merely a variable list of attributes, Alice in wonderland definitions, I am not sure what we are talking about.
Huntington’s prophecy The Clash of Civilizations, apparently has pride of place, I.e. they, the big they horrible and mean are after us!
Some clarity is provided by Prof. Pape in Dying to Win an analysis of suicide bombers 1980 to 2005. He finds that a majority are not Muslim but secular and that most simply behave as they do outraged at occupation of their country.
In the light of this I must conclude that the question of torture is raised (and used) for the creation of fear by the state. All kinds of power enhancing legislation can be mounted assured of a panic acceptance by the governed. Certainly if, as in the case of the Muslims whose countries and culture has been illegally invaded by the west, a believable thesis. On the one hand a weak group fights in the ways available and the States as obscurantism as well as diversion highlight and use torture. The powerful target infrastructure and accept “collaterals” happily use phosphorous and ignore international conventions including Geneva, and count themselves honourable! Definition and propaganda are all.

leigh, if manderson's argument against the use of torture made you a little squeamish then its a good thing you wernt reading bagaric's original article. and i dont think he was suggesting that those in prisions across the middle east are innocent (some may be of course, i believe that there are a sizeable number of pro democracy advocates incarcerated in eqypt), but rather that the dehumanisation of their belifes or principals is accelerated or initiated by their own dehumanisation at the hands of their torturers.

the key point of this article as i see it, which i guess numbat missed, is that the objection to torture is not a sign of weakness or irrational sentimentality or squeamishness, but a position of strength, of rationality and principal, of civililisation against the primitive. it is certainly not a sign of weakness in the face of terrorism. you may say that they are not civilised or decent but what would we be if we gave in?

If it is permissible and moral to torture a Muslim fundamentalist for the purposes of protecting innocent Westerners, Christian fundamentalist or not, is it also permissible and moral to torture a white supremacist for the purposes of protecting innocent Muslim fundamentalists? The question of whether torture is morally acceptable is an abstract one. If torture is abhorrent it is simply abhorrent, not sometimes OK. It is either permissible or not, and if it is permissible it should be universally permissible. If we can torture the ticking bomb terrorist then we can't complain when someone suggests we should also torture people who we suspect don't make their kids eat their greens.