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The Forum > Article Comments > Torture is bad - killing innocent people is worse > Comments

Torture is bad - killing innocent people is worse : Comments

By Mirko Bagaric, published 28/12/2007

It’s better to be a reluctant torturer than a murderous bystander.

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Mirko's arguments are thought-provoking as ever, but we can do without the more emotive comments about civil libertarian 'fanatics' etc.

Some of the holes have been ably pointed out by others. The overriding problem is that Mirko is providing very selective individual cases where a utilitarian case could be made out that torture created more good than harm.

However public policy is not based on selected individual cases, but on the overall balance of costs v benefits of changing the law to allow torture generically.

The history of world governments shows that they cannot be trusted to use that power wisely, and to discriminate between the rare cases when torture might serve the common good, and the other cases where it leads to plain simple abuse without any public benefit at all.
Posted by Michael T, Thursday, 3 January 2008 3:51:48 PM
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