What every American should know

The torture memos.

Thinking about this rationally, to me, the real crime here wasn't just the torture. It was the hidden, secretive abuse of individuals under the guise of protecting the rest of us. Quite honestly, I don't have anything against using all means necessary to get information out of someone that is dangerous to the country.

But the problem lies in only using these methods to withdraw information, and ensuring that there is actual information to withdraw.

A good parallel would be the fourth amendment, which guarantees against unreasonable search and seizure. In our information age, knowledge itself has become something worth searching for. The fourth amendment basically says that to engage in an invasion of privacy, the executive must seek a warrant from the judicial branch of government. So far, this has worked out pretty well - can't we learn something from this? Would people be as against torture if they knew that the accused had a good amount of evidence that he was withholding information, that might save lives, enough evidence that convinced a judge?

Meh. Perhaps. Another parallel would be capital punishment. In our society, we still believe that if a person has committed a heinous enough crime, and it can be proven as such, then they deserve to die. Despite this, we still have been committed to making the execution process more and more humane (although there's a legitimate argument to be made that it could be more humane than it is now). We're not wishing suffering upon the condemned, but simply coming to the conclusion that society can never be safe with his presence.

Likewise, the decision to torture someone can be completely divorced from the decision of how to do so. Extraction of information via pain, whether physical or psychological, is not attempting to inflict pain for the sake of inflicting pain (any more than the death penalty ought to be just to kill someone painfully). It should be centered completely around the outcomes, the information gathered. Techniques like water boarding do actually fill this niche of inflicting the maximum amount of short term, easily reversible psychological trauma most likely to get information from an unwilling suspect without long term physical harm.

Don't get me wrong, it's tragic, but I don't see anything per say wrong with the idea so long as the accused rights are respected - see the warrant gathered above. Any psychologist will tell you torture is good - in fact, too good - at getting people to tell you what you want. That's why it's useless (and morally abhorrent) for confessions and the like. But if we, a priori, have a great deal of evidence implicating a person in a conspiracy or plot in which people are still in mortal harm, enough evidence to convince a judge, and torture is administered for the sole sake of gathering information rather than causing needless pain, exactly what is wrong with it?

I know I'm living in a dream world in which human beings can act reasonably enough not to abuse such techniques, but on the face of it, it's completely ethical. You harm one person to save others from more harm. Assuming protections are in place to ensure that the harm is only the mechanism for gathering information, and that ample enough evidence has been gathered to prove that the accused does contain information that puts others in mortal danger, aren't we morally obliged to act?