Toture. Murder. Rape.
Hitchens speculates that it's about to get a whole lot worse.
Notice that he provides a positive alternative to torture:
Skill, in these matters, depends on taking pains and not on inflicting them. You make the chap go through his story several times, preferably on video, and then you ask his friends a huge number of tedious questions, and then you go through it all again to check for discrepancies, and then you watch the first (very boring and sexless) video all over once more, and then you make him answer all the same questions and perhaps a couple of new and clever ones. If you have got the wrong guy-and it does happen-you let him go and offer him a ride home and an apology. And you know what? It often works. Only a lazy and incompetent dirtbag looks for brutal shortcuts so that he can get off his shift early.
I'd really like to have some brilliant analysis, but I don't have anything to say. Torture is wrong and morally reprehensible. Plus, it doesn't work. We haven't received actionable intelligence and everyone just hates us more. I am ashamed that my country would condone it. I'm ashamed that no one is willing to come clean about how and why it was authorized. I'm just ashamed.
Notice that he provides a positive alternative to torture:
Skill, in these matters, depends on taking pains and not on inflicting them. You make the chap go through his story several times, preferably on video, and then you ask his friends a huge number of tedious questions, and then you go through it all again to check for discrepancies, and then you watch the first (very boring and sexless) video all over once more, and then you make him answer all the same questions and perhaps a couple of new and clever ones. If you have got the wrong guy-and it does happen-you let him go and offer him a ride home and an apology. And you know what? It often works. Only a lazy and incompetent dirtbag looks for brutal shortcuts so that he can get off his shift early.
I'd really like to have some brilliant analysis, but I don't have anything to say. Torture is wrong and morally reprehensible. Plus, it doesn't work. We haven't received actionable intelligence and everyone just hates us more. I am ashamed that my country would condone it. I'm ashamed that no one is willing to come clean about how and why it was authorized. I'm just ashamed.