The Torture Temptation | Ted Galen Carpenter | Cato Institute

The Torture Temptation | Ted Galen Carpenter | Cato Institute: " In Cohen’s case, he posits that interrogators know that not only is an attack on the scale of 9/11 imminent, but that the suspect they are interrogating has important knowledge about that attack.

Lifeboat examples are both artificial and largely useless in the real world. In the case of the situation Cohen sets up, there is no way interrogators can be certain of either aspect. What those who use a 9/11 lifeboat scenario are really saying is that if interrogators believe that an attack is imminent and think that the person in their custody has crucial knowledge about the plans, it is okay to torture him. That attitude leads to not just one but several slippery slopes."

"Yet another slippery slope is that if it is acceptable to use torture in terrorism cases, it will become easier and more tempting to use it in other settings. Why not, for example, involving cases of child abduction, when a child’s life might be in danger? Or how about using it to break up drug gangs that engage in turf fights that often kill innocent bystanders?"

"Proponents of the PATRIOT Act touted it as an essential weapon in the war on terror, but it is revealing that surveillance and other provisions of that law have been used in far more drug trafficking cases than terrorism cases—1,618 of the former, only 15 of the latter."