Mike, here's where I'm coming from.
The question is not whether I would rape a 6 year old girl to save my family. That would entail brutalizing an innocent child. It also would entail my family living with the knowledge and guilt that the saving of their lives caused that horrible act. Would I do it? I don't know, but my gut feeling is that probably I wouldn't. Don't hang me for being indecisive because it's very difficult to process that decision.
The decision is whether to torture someone in a terrorist or war or possibly even criminal situation where someone is opposing you and has information that could save lives. In a war you kill people. You even kill innocent people. If you've made the commitment to go to war and kill, you've made the commitment to do some other dirty deeds along the way. The person with the information is a criminal or a war enemy. They are not the 6 year old innocent girl. They are the opposition and they have the ability to save themselves from torture and worse by offering up the information freely.
There are some tough ethical issues, but torturing in a terrorist or war situation is not really one for me. I doubt I could be the one personally to do it, but I wouldn't prohibit our government from doing it.
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