Posted 10:46 AM by extinct

Mourning Becomes Electrode, or
Where is Lynddie England when you need her?

Bloggers heavy on the morals and immorals of torture are missing a great issue. I refer to the ongoing story of the young lady missing in Aruba. Some known individuals may know the missing gal's whereabouts. Shouldn't they get the full electrode treatment to help find her?

Sad to say, I don't have nearly as strong opinion an opinion on the absolute evil of torture as a libertarian should, though I do have a general "I'm again' it". (I do think, however, that certain kinds of post-judicial due process corporal punishment ought not be ruled out). Nevertheless, equivocating further, I am also sure that the bulk of purported actions of torture by "our side" and the justifications for them are actually rooted in frustration, sadism, and an ill-focused and even racist sense of revenge. Additionally, levels of acceptance of torture are a good barometer of the level of standards of civlized due process.

But the Aruba case presents a true "ticking-bomb" analgoue scenario. (The "ticking bomb" refers to a common justification for torture of terrorists, based on the assumption that the torturee has some necessary knowledge to offset an active deadly operation, like a ticking bomb, where normal crime investigation has insufficient time to act.) In this case, some arrestees may have knowlege of the location of a person who may be alive but in captivity or injured -- it is not unknown for kidnappers to leave victims to die, or who are thought to be dead, in some hellhole, as recently happened with a little girl in a dumpster.

I also caution that in reality the ticking-bomb justification is far more a rationalization, as torture is often systematically practiced where it is done, and are not ad hoc measures for urgent information.

So, is torture ok in cases like the lost girl in Aruba? Should they take the suspects with the story that doesn't add up about her whereabouts and turn them over to Lynddie England?