This was probably the main motivation behind the black sites / Guantanamo / "enhanced interrogation" techniques and the okaying of those (in blatant violation of Geneva conventions, I might add - did the US ever get called to justice for that?) - 5000+ people died in the 9/11 attacks by the instantly dehumanized muslim terrorists, everything is now morally justified to prevent something like that happening again, including enhanced interrogation, sending more people that died in the attacks to die in an eventually pointless war, etc.
Technically torture of suspected terrorists wasn't a violation of the Geneva conventions because they aren't covered by the Third Geneva Convention and the USA never ratified Additional Protocol I.
(Personally I think torture is always wrong, I just want to make sure the legal issue is clear.)
I've been thinking about that since a comment I made a while back. It was made here in response to an article about the CIA black sites.
In that comment, I said torture was unacceptable and more so when it was done in my name.
I have since wavered on this as I've considered some proposed hypotheticals. I've decided, at least for now, that it may not always be wrong but that it is always abhorrent.
Hypothetically, such a situation could exist where it is the right choice but it is still reprehensible. The whole WMD thing and saving a city? Yeah, I guess it's the right choice but it's still abhorrent. If I had every reason to believe the information could be extracted, I'd do the torturing myself.
In the end, I'd hope that I'd be more unhappy that I was forced to do so than I was unhappy that I did so. I imagine it would bother me for the rest of my life, but I'd accept that burden.
