A fair question to ask, and a standard one, as well … Does the value of the end of an action justify the means, no matter how morally heinous? I think not. Sometimes we need to be willing to suffer death rather than embrace evil with the often false assumption we can walk away unscathed.

It depends on how you define “torture.” I’ve been through S.E.R.E training. Waterboarding would have been easier than some of the stuff I went through, just for training.

Is it always wrong for a SWAT team sniper to take out a hostage taker who has a knife to the throat of a five year old girl?

Is it wrong to kill a terrorist on the battlefield, rather than take them into custody to question?

Why did my first post get removed?

From a moral/religious perspective, I believe torture is always wrong. As I get older and (hopefully) wiser, I’m coming to lean more and more towards what I might call informed Christian Pacifism. It’s like this: I believe that each person on the earth is a child of God, that each person, to borrow a phrase from the Society of Friends, has ‘that of God’ within them. Believing that, then I have no choice but to believe in non-violence to all humans as the ideal.

Add to that the volumes of evidence that torture, for the most part, doesn’t work. The victim of torture will pretty much say whatever he or she thinks needs to be said to get it to stop. Researchers from as diverse places as the Army War College to professional psychologists all say the same thing.

What it DOES seem to me, is that the desire to torture, and the willingness to torture, says more about the torturer than anything else. It seems, in many cases, to be about revenge. And I recall the verse in Isaiah: Vengeance is MINE, says God.

Does the end justify the means? No, I don’t think so.

I consider this thought as well (sorry, I don’t know who said it originally): Be careful when you deal with evil, that you do not become evil yourself.

I believe there is a difference between torturing someone and killing a person to save an innocent life. Torturing someone does not automatically save a life. The person you torture may deserve punishment for some crime, but torture is not a punishment. We are called to treat even our enemies with respect, regardless of how they treat us.

Good posts hs and Ken, you covered it well enough for me to not say anything…and how often does that happen!

I will simply tell you this: I can get anyone to say anything I want them to say, anytime I want them to say it. To me, torture is not only immoral but is an ineffective tool for interrogation. If you torture someone long enough and the right way, they will say anything to get the torture to stop.