OK, bleeding hearts, tell me what you would do in this situation (one we could quite possibly face in the next few years):

A 10 megaton nuclear weapon has been secreted in Sydney and is timed to explode in 30 minutes. The authorities have just learned about the bomb, and have captured a terrorist who knows its location. He is perfectly happy to die in the explosion. There is not enough time to evacuate the inhabitants of Sydney before the explosion, but the authorities are confident they can defuse it if they can find it.

Question: Should the authorities torture the terrorist to discover its location?

I will be interested to read the responses.

The USA has not experienced another mass murder by Allah loving fascists.

Obviously just good ole fashioned luck.

The term torture certainly covers a very wide range of activity. Fine line between pleasure and pain.

The main justification for not torturing military prisoners (which I agree with) is that when a soldier from your own side is captured then it can be reasonably expected that the foe will reciprocate with humane treatment.

Since the xenophopic Koran bashers have inverted the entire concept of waging war with some rules there is no longer the expectation that military personnel will not be tortured. In fact the opposite expectation exists. When Islamists who are not part of a regular army (by UN definition) choose to torture Nuns and humanitarian workers then a large part of the reason to treat prisoners humanely is nullified.

Situational ethics is supposed to be a most acceptable philosophy for western society. Unless of course an opportunity arises to demonise the USA, then only rigid adherance to a loosely articulated international rule can be acceptable.

I saw a TV interview of an officer who worked with the prisoners and he adamantly asserted that large amounts of actionable intelligence was extracted from prisoners using a variety of means. He appeared genuine to me.

I know who I would prefer to protect my well being and future and it is not the arm chair experts.

"I saw a TV interview of an officer who worked with the prisoners and he adamantly asserted that large amounts of actionable intelligence was extracted from prisoners using a variety of means. He appeared genuine to me"

was this where the WMD's in Iraq info came form,...... please, although if torture is a truth serum , how about testing some politicans, what good for the goose.....!!

Plerdsus

Given a 10 megaton weapon would weigh 1,000+kgs it would be difficult to "secrete" anywhere.

Your scenerio of a "ticking" bomb is not how jihadists (eg al Qaeda) operate. The detonation would be done manually ie a suicide bomber.

Suicide bombing - no chance of interrogation or defusing - gives confused young Muslims an edge (unfortunately).

Hence we don't need to adopt Donald Rumsfeld's torture doctrine. A bloke called John Yoo developed it for the US Defence Department after 9/11 when it was already too late. Torture wouldn't have worked during 9/11 or during any other of the major bombing events (Madrid, London) since then.

I wouldn't underestimate how the US hides its yearning for REVENGE for 9/11 (can we blame it?) when it sells the merits of torture doctrine. This torture applies to the torture of 1,000s round the world not to extremely rare events (where the one-off "rules" would be developed on the spot (with quick phone calls)).

Still, we don't need to slavishly copy Yank thinking - even if our PM does.

Pete
http://spyingbadthings.blogspot.com

The headline of this article - 'US culture of torture'- is absurdly geared to elicit emotion rather than any rational debate. The entire piece makes allusions to horrendous practices that are usually the domain of Islamic and third world countries as being practiced by the US as a matter of course. It fails to differentiate between its use against everyday citizens and spies and enemies, and the entire heap of steaming excrement the author has dumped on our plate consists of third hand accounts gleaned from a book that mysteriously uses secret documents to which the author of it was somehow privy to, as well as implying they are somehow responsible for what happens to someone they handed over to some other country that happens to be less enlightened- but gets off having a book written about it because we don't really expect any better from them, and goes on to say the US is guilty of inhumanity and injustice without any empirical evidence to back these claims, reducing them to mere opinion rather than facts of any real substance. The real shock factor probably lies in the fact that Americans are human, and humans are capable of such things, and errs by omitting the reality that western countries are far less likely to use real torture than dictatorships, socialist and Islamic ones - locking someone up without cigarettes for a day probably counts as torture to this ignorant oaf who's telling us " I read it in a book!". Failure to note there is no nation on earth that has not used the big stick at one time or another is not only shows a lack of understanding of the subject as a whole, but shows how biased he is against the US in his American bashing. But I suppose in his cocoon of academe, he can bash them with impunity.

Plerdsus asks:
“Tell me what you would do in this situation …10 megaton nuclear weapon has been secreted in Sydney and is timed to explode in 30 minutes…
Question: Should the authorities torture the terrorist to discover its location?”

( Touch-down!)

Plantagenet responds:
“Your scenerio of a "ticking" bomb is not how jihadists (eg al Qaeda) operate. The detonation would be done manually ie a suicide bomber.”

GREAT SIDE-STEP !

NOW LET'S HEAR YOU (& OTHERS) ANSWER THE QUESTION!

Jihadists (others) will use whatever means are at their disposal.
Do you seriously doubt they wouldn't use nuclear weapons, if they became available?