Would you care to tell us on what occasion at all in the sorry history of human idiocy has there ever been an occasion when 15 MILLION OF THE SODS, where at risk of imminent death at one and the same time.

My scenario is hypothetical, not historical.

But I can think of a historical time when 2000 lives were at risk and it was in the hands of 19 guys, any one of whom if captured could have helped unravel the plot. During the Cold War, there were hundreds of millions of lives at risk in the event of an all out nuclear exchange. If the Taliban take over Pakistan and acquire Pakistan's nuclear weapons, they could give one to their buddy Osama bin Laden, who could hide it on a container ship, sail into New York Harbor and detonate, wiping out most of the population of New York City. I admittedly pulled the 15 million number out of the air but feel free to consult the Census Bureau and find out the actual number for yourself. It won't be materially different.

And the occasion when not only that was happening but the fact of it happening and the possible remedy was in the hands of only 1 of them?

Well if one guy knows where a bomb is planted, then that's all you need. That may be impossible for you to imagine, but it's not for most people with functioning forebrains.

All these Fool-based Krauthammeresque arguments are a deliberate distraction. None of the men tortured by Bush and company were "ticking time bombs." So the tortured defense of torture is irrelevant to the facts as they exist.

Fuck you. Really. Fuck you pal. I've made that point myself over and over and over.

You're hysterical.

How about you break the law via torturing someone, which is illegal, to save all those lives (and as a military historian I can tell you point-blank that there are no extant nuclear weapons or population centers with densities high enough to take out 15 million people in one go) and then ACCEPT THE PUNISHMENT FOR BREAKING THE LAW. If you've done the right thing in your heart, can't you then live with the consequences of breaking the law for what you thought was a good reason?

Dude: READ THE FUCKING THREAD. That is precisely what I had proposed.

How's that know-nothing circle jerk going?

Must be hard to do while you're all patting each other on the back.

If you're in a serious debate, and if you don't have a good counter-argument

I thought you didn't approve of counterfactual hypotheticals...

For I have sinned. I have sinned against the one true deontological faith. Duty and obligation are all!

I bow down before your divinely inspired rules, and I will follow them no matter what the consequences! It is not the result that matters. Oh, no! I tell you what ultimately matters is whether or not one submits to the RULES -- the glorious, beautiful, radiant, sovereign rules before which I bow my head and submit.

Who knows those rules? Why, of course, Ondelette and Paul Deus Ash know the rules! How do they know them? That is not for me to know. Perhaps, in due course, they will deign to tell us all. But until that day, we must simply worship their rules as if commanded by God Almighty himself. Ours is not to wonder why! Oh no, my brothers and sisters, ours is but to do and -- if need to be to preserve the rights of a terrorist -- to die. And in VERY large numbers too! For so hath it been decreed by the Omniscient Ondelette and the All-Powerful Paul Deus Ash.

But that is not all! For I have dared to use my imagination. Fool that I am, I have dared to imagine things that are not and to assert that they might be! Blasphemy! It is not for such as I to examine the consequences of the rules I have been given or to ponder their value. Nay, for that is above my pay grade. The Omniscient Ondelette and the All-Powerful Paul Deus Ash understand these things and have intuited the PERFECT rules that can never fail under any circumstances you could ever imagine (well, that is, IF you were allowed to imagine such things, which you are NOT!). I will not worry my pretty little head about such trivialities, as consequences. And neither should you. Consequences be damned -- as any of us surely will be if we dare to elevate dirty, wicked consequences over the PERFECT rules.

Duty and obligation are all! Oh I pray that the Omniscient Ondelette and the All-Powerful Paul Deus Ash will always be around so that even a wretched sinner such as myself may always know what his sacred duty shall be!

Do you have any actual counter-arguments

Funny you should ask me that since I've already made them. Repeatedly.

The problem is that you simply lack the capacity to comprehend them, which is why you don't realize they've already been made and that you've already been massively pwned.

The H.M.S. Fail already set sail a long time ago with you on board as Captain along with your trusty First Mate in Failure, Ondelette, manning the wheel.

It's like trying to teach chimps language. You can only go so far before you run into insuperable barriers. After that, you can beat your head against the wall, trying to get them to understand even a minimally complex sentence but you just have to accept that they will never progress beyond a small vocabulary of individual words and a few rudimentary sentences.

But dude: have a banana. You tried your best.

...can hoist someone on their own petard better than Glenn Greenwald.