Is there any established justification for torturing terrorist suspects?
The answer is no. Thus far nobody, from Cheney down, has produced one shred of credible evidence that it has saved the lives of anyone. To be sure many claims have been made, but whenever you try to examine those claims more closely they all tend to either evaporate like a will-o-the-wisp or vanish down some classified black hole that only a privileged few are allowed to examine. Meanwhile, the American rightwing now finds itself out on the proverbial limb trying (like “Progressive” and “midixon19”) to justify the unjustifiable. Hence we find such statements as: 1) “the torture has been used for hundreds of years by many countries (democratic or otherwise)”, ergo “it must be somewhat useful or nobody would use it.”; and 2) “to call those who are fighting to keep our country safe ‘torturers’ is cowardly”. All of which means that what used to be regarded as a hideous crime when it was only nasty tyrants like Saddam and Adolf who did it has now apparently been rehabilitated, to the point
