Erdos Had The Number First

Bush Accepts McCain’s Ban on Torture - Yahoo! News

All I can say about the anti-torture thing is that it is about freeking time. I think a CIA exception sends the wrong message to the world.

There are things that are worse than being destroyed. There are some principles that are more important than anything else. The ‘ticking time bomb’ example that is often used is a straw man argument. For one thing, Al Quiada isn’t stupid, they know about compartmentalization of information as much as we do. Their operatives are highly compartmentalized, and aww crap, I’ll just give you a scenario:

Who: 9 man team.
What: plants low-yield radiologic device with some plutonium scavenged from an SS-24 (RT-23) MIRV
It is possible that an entire, and intact, warhead is in place, though this is thought very unlikely.
Where: somewhere in NYC.
When: to detonate in 5 days
Why: Cause that’s what the badguys do

But there’s been a break, four of the team are captured, one is killed. That leaves three bad-guys in custody. A team of interrogators shows up and starts working over the bad guys. The torture works, and all three spill the beans. The problem is they now have two possible locations, since two gave one location and the third gave another. Strike teams are dispatched. Less than one hour after the bad-guys have confessed, the teams find not one but two radiologic devices. They are, however, not powerful enough. Each has less than a kilo of Plutonium and are, after careful analysis, decoys. This kind of duress code is often used in high-security situations. Multiple bmobs are an Al Queida MO, so the men with the dental tools all nod knowingly and realize they have a problem.

The bad guys have been watching the decoys, though, and now they know they’ve been made. So they blow the bomb early. This time the intelligence was correct. approximately 10 kilograms of Plutonium are blown up in a super-bouncing-betty-radiologic bomb. Plutonium dust is all over Hoboken. The city goes positively bat-shit.

That torture the prisoner crap only works in the movies. In real life the enemy will adapt, overcome. The only way to win in these situations is to make sure they don’t get to this point. I’m probably going to jail for just writing this post.