The door for suffering, in the course and world of human existence, is forever open, and it can never be shut. All that can be done by us is to minimize the inevitability of despair, death, and destruction. I honestly cannot fathom how this is to be accomplished, when we allow knowledge necessary to the instant survival of many of innocents to be ignored over the insignificant compassion to this one individual. Should not the compassion for the ones we protect matter more? Does not the well-being of the many outweigh the well-being of the one?

He who saves one live saves the world entire, if that is true then wouldn't the killing of one damn us all? The fact is that torture is NOT useful, there are no cases I can name where torture has led to the prevention of anything. If we Torture we become no better then the people who seek to destroy us. Also Rome just because it was done in the past does not give anyone cart blanch to do what ever they want to obtain information, and its also true in human history that a person will do ANYTHING to get the torture to stop, even if it means damning themselves to prison or worse death, just to get the pain to stop. Information gained willingly is more reliable than information gained under mental or physical distress.

I understand that. I'm not saying that we should just use it all willy-nilly, but there are times when they will not be willing, when thousands of lives are at immediate risk, and the only way to get anything is to torture them. I do not support torturing captured enemy soldiers. I only support torturing dangerous terrorists in the face of massive, imminent and known threats.

The good citizen Rome is correct. Sometimes the ends justify the means. When fighting for freedom and democracy small bending's of the rules should be permitted for the good of all us freedom loving citizens.

How ever, what if enemy soldiers posed the same risk to our good and noble citizens? The enemy should surely be smited and punished accordingly.

Torture, in my eyes, is ok to an extent. I don't believe mental torture would be very wise because then you could get random results, even putting a psyco killer into more of psyconess. Physical torture can be helpful, but not to the extent of the torturing in the SAW series.

I say this: Eye for an Eye, you kill, you get killed the same way. You steal, you get fingers or hand cut off. But if I heard even a rumor that ANY country was going to attack us with nuclear weapons, i'd send a group of highly trained spies to find out whether or not it was true and if it was, send some assassins to take out the leaders of the group, then when they do strike, take them out completely, wiping the country off the map. We have ATOM bombs, which are beautiful in war to take out people.

quote Tiki Penguin

The torture our government applies puts SAW to shame. I'm sure there is tons of shit we don't know about yet that we're using to collect intel. And ultimately, it doesn't come down to morals, because if the enemy wants to kill you, he does not have morals. The only way to win is to realize you might need to level the playing field. Honestly, will you sit there and tell me that if North Korea launched nuclear weapons at us that projected casualties in the millions, you wouldn't support a counterattack?

Your using an assumed threat to justify the destruction of lives. No matter the torture it will always scar. If we MUST torture someone to obtain the information then that information is not worth the sacrifice we made to get it, we had to mentally or physically destroy someone to obtain it. If you think it is so worth it, then you do it, and see what it does, not only to the victim, but to yourself. You are also ignoring the fact that information gained under distress, weather mental or physical, is NOT RELIABLE. It has proven such today and in the past, all it has ever led to is bad missions and the deaths of people.

The other problem is that you use a fake, assumed, shadow threat to justify real action and retaliation. A "hidden danger" trumped up to a "Clear and Present Danger". If someone could provide real numbers to back an endorsement of torture, with cases in which it has worked and led to something substantial, against the number of times it is used to no effect, then fine you are proven right.