There is much popular anger directed at the USA because of its alleged use of torture in interrogating combatants detained in the war on terror. On this blog 'Selsdon Man' has been a persistent and articulate advocate of that anger.
A 'hot topic article' in today's Wall Street Journal argues that there is a difference between the 'aggressive interrogation' used by America's military and what might popularly be thought of as 'torture'. The WSJ also says that the continuation of AI techniques is essential to pre-empt future terrorist threats.
Here are the two relevant quotations:
(1) "It is simply perverse to conflate the amputations and electrocutions Saddam once inflicted at Abu Ghraib with the lesser abuses committed by rogue American soldiers there, much less with any authorized U.S. interrogation techniques. No one has yet come up with any evidence that anyone in the U.S. military or government has officially sanctioned anything close to "torture." The "stress positions" that have been allowed (such as wearing a hood, exposure to heat and cold, and the rarely authorized "waterboarding," which induces a feeling of suffocation) are all psychological techniques designed to break a detainee."
(2) "It is hardly far-fetched to imagine a scenario in which our ability to extract information from a terrorist is the only thing that might prevent a bioterror attack or even the nuclear annihilation of an American city. And we know for a fact that information wrung from 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and others has helped prevent further attacks on U.S. soil."
Discuss...
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