CNN Poll: Is torture ever justified to get info?

Yep now that is shocking indeed.
I don't ever wanna get caught by you Americans...

That result also raises concerns in regards to that international warcrime court the US don't want to accept.

When we torture = Good
When they torture = Bad

Oh. Now I understand.

That is a sad poll that says a lot about the sad state of mind this country is currently in. Depressing.

This has been debated extensively on another thread, but to summarize my thoughts:

If a person is convicted of a crime so heinous it deserves the death penalty, so be it. The execution should be conducted as humanely as can be done.

I will forever speak out that inflicting unbearable pain, mutilating, maiming, or knowingly damaging a person's health is torture and, it is not acceptable and should never be tolerated or defended anywhere by anybody.

My problem with this whole debate is with those who want to equate sleep deprivation, solitary confinement, fear, embarrassment, humiliation, even nudity, etc. with torture. Some actually think that equates with Saddam chopping off people's hands, cutting out tongues, cutting off ears, gouging out eyes, brutally raping, beatings, burning, starving, suspending people from the ceiling by their thumbs, feeding people feet first into wood chippers or acid baths, etc.

By my definition what Saddam did to prisoners at Abu Ghraib was torture. What some US soldiers did at Abu Ghraib while morally corrupt, disgusting, unconscionable, and indefensible, was in most cases not torture.

Somewhere in between torture and morally indefensible is the middle ground of reasonable aggressive interrogation practices. When you have a terrorist in custody who in all probability has information that could help us rescue a hostage or protect and save dozens, hundred, or thousands of innocent lives, short of torture or morally indefensible I don't care how uncomfortable they make the terrorist.

Let's say you're fighting an urban war. Both you and your enemy have three hostages. You know the enemy is using extreme methods of torture to get information from their captives, in order to find you and kill you. What do you do?

You do what you have to do but leave out the part where while you're doing the same dirt as your enemy you insistently and constantly declare to the world that you're different and better and have a more noble cause than your enemy because it's bullshit.

All pigs at the same trough.....

I was going to say sodium pentathol. But to each their own bear!