Waterboarding
Via “Sadly, No!”:http://sadlyno.com/archives/4076.html, amidst “a description of waterboarding”:http://hereswhatsleft.typepad.com/home/2005/01/waterboarding.html we get the best response to the idea that torture is necessary because the stakes are so high:
bq. The issue is not, as the conservacons likes to pretend it is, some sort of fictitious, academic _reductio ad absurdum_ scenario in which Osama has the code to disarm the nuclear bomb that’s about to go off in Times Square, and we have him in custody, and our moral duty to the people in Manhattan conflicts with our duty to oppose torture, etc. Such a scenario has as little to do with torture as the issue of whether you’d shoot a guy threatening your mom has with to do with murder or whether you’d steal a loaf of bread to feed your children has to do with larceny. The issue is one of normativity.