Your going to bring karma into a discussion about logical outcomes? Why didn't you just tell him he'd go to hell?

"That is incorrect. There would be no consequences under the criminal law. Self-defense is a perfect, i.e., complete, defense."-- wbgonne

That is correct but it differs from what you are saying in one very important way.

To be useful as a defense, you must prove to a court of law that you were, in fact, defending yourself. By advocating that you be allowed to determine, by yourself, whether or not to torture someone, you're leaving a step out of the process which is critical in criminal law.

Torture must be illegal. (period)

If a court of law decides, upon receipt of valid evidence, that your use of torture is permitted under the doctrine of self-defense, that's a horse of an entirely different color than writing a legal torture exception into the law itself. When you utilize torture, you must begin with the fact that you are committing a crime and may be held accountable for that criminal act.

these are difficult questions legally and morally that do not lend themselves to simple answers. THAT IS MY POINT.

Funny. A minute ago you were saying your POINT was that impobably hypotheticals sometimes happen. Wouldn't you hate it if you had to argue with you?

Addressing your POINT of the moment, though: no, these are not difficult questions legally. At all. The law is quite clear: torture is illegal. Full stop. The moral question - whether certain otherwise immoral acts are justifiable to prevent a greater wrong - is enormously difficult to defend prospectively... that is, without absolute knowledge of the outcome.

If you want to have this kind of rarefied philosophical discussion, I'm game... but you started by calling this a "practical" argument. And it's nothing of the sort.

Threat of Punishment Works, Study Suggests

..."The new study shows that over the long term, punishment gets ingrained in people's psyches in a way that causes them to fear getting into trouble."...

http://www.livescience.com/culture/081204-crime-punishment.html

that the Democratic Congress and Obama poised to force labor concessions as part of the auto industry bailout? (BTW, where his high profile announcement of Secretary of labor?)

Curious, in that no such concessions seem to apply to Wall Street bailouts.

Is this like a Nixon goes to China kina of thing - labor squeezed by Dems?

Oh, and bend over and get ready for the "stimulus package" to be used to weaken all sorts of environmental review and permit regulations (aka "red tape"), under the guise a getting s shovel in the ground for critical infrastructure and job creation. After Labor, Dems next target: screw enviro's.

Once again I'll ask for that elusive practical answer: Would you have permitted the torture of one person if it would have prevented the Holocaust? Wbgonne

This is a ridiculous argument, a teleological one (if I remember my university philosophy professor correctly). It amounts to "the ends justify the means."

A few weeks back there was an argument here over whether the death of a baby would be justified if that death brought about cures for any number of human illnesses (at least that's how I remember the debate).

I'll avoid a long and drawn out comment on teleological arguments; what I will say is that you're not looking for an "elusive practical answer." You're looking for justification. You're assuming that a) said person actually possesses critical information; b) that information can be reliably extracted via torture; c) the information "extracted" will happily prevent some earth-shaking event.

Does any of this sound reasonable? I hope it doesn't, because it's not.

As anyone who has observed Senate Democrats for any length of time knows, this is exactly how their capitulations and backtracking always begin.

This is as opposed to the Arlen Specter Triple Lindy Backtracking Plan™ wherein one: espouses principled, reasonable stand against horrendous, immoral policies in unambiguous language; then proceeds to vote in complete contradiction to said principles.

I am not sure which is worse.

I try to be gone, serious.

You made me remember:

The Irish born philologist!

Richard Chenevix Trench!

*Language is the amber in which a thousand precious thoughts have been safely embedded and preserved. It has has arrested ten-thousand lightening-flashes of genius which, unless thus fixed, might have been as bright, but would also have been as quickly passing and perishing in the lightening."*Trench was greatly honored, D.M.

Richard C. Trench is buried in Westminster Abbey.

Derbig Mooser talks like this:*Curgloft, confounded,

and bumbaz'd, On east and west by turns he gazed.

As ship that's tost with stormy weather, drives on,

and a pilot who knows not whither.*- Poetical Works. William Meston. 1767. Great, IMO. I hope.

Why would anyone think that the CIA needs anyone's permission to do anything? Blaming the politicians might feel good because after all the situation is so terrible the need is strong to blame someone but in most cases it's best to blame those actually responsible -namely the CIA, the dungbeetles of the world. Always rolling a big ball of shit around all day long. The laws weren't changed to protect the CIA, they don't need protection, they were changed to protect the politicians, so that they couldn't be held accountable for what the CIA does and has always done. Because the truth is, they can't stop them. Bill Clinton found that out when he wanted to send drones into Afghanistan to kill bin Laden. The CIA simply refused to do what he wanted, sending only unarmed drones, because they knew they could and because bin Laden was useful to them. What would be the point of insisting that the CIA comply with anything? They don't do compliance. To say the Democrats are in control is optimistic in the extreme. They're in control of what they're allowed to be in control of, as all administrations in America are. That's why nothing ever gets done and nothing ever changes. The truth is, Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo are not the worst things the CIA has done, even the rendition is not the worst. They've done far worse things and no one has ever laid a finger on them for any of it. 9/11 was a CIA stunt and the politicians know it but there's an unspoken agreement not to talk about it or to admit it publicly ever. If they can't confront the CIA over that what can they confront them over? 9/11 is the CIA's trump card and they know it. After 9/11 they were handed virtually unlimited powers and had returned to them the powers taken away after Watergate, including the power to assassinate foreign leaders.

The sole attacker captured alive in Mumbai has said he was trained for 18 months before the attacks and that none of the people involved had met before the day of the attacks. It's more or less accepted in all the commentary I've heard that Pakistan's secret service, the ISI, was behind the attacks which were carried out to de-stabilize and if possible bring down the democratically elected government of Pakistan and to promote hostility between Pakistan and India. Do you really imagine any politician in Pakistan would dare to confront the ISI or the Pakistani army over this? If they did that in any serious way there would be a military coup. And in America any politician who really took on the CIA would also experience serious consequences, which is why they don't do it. The other problem is that for anything meaningful to be done about the CIA the Republicans would have to play ball and they won't. The right and the CIA have had a long and fruitful partnership.