Originally Posted by Force-of-the-Truth";p=&quot

Here is the moral issue. There is the utilitarian view that one unethical action can prevent a greater number of more unethical actions. However, we do not know that any specific act of waterboarding will prevent any specific evil from occurring. We have only the fallible judgment of the interrogators. If a person were omniscient and knew with 100% certainty that an act of waterboarding would prevent a greater evil, then they would be justified in waterboarding someone.
However, none of us are omniscient, so allowing an evil based on 100% fallible human judgment is essentially stating, "Do it when you feel like it", since no objective criteria can be given for speculating on what knowledge another person does or does not possess. That is why we have absolute moral rules- why our laws don't read, "Don't do such and such... unless you think you have a good reason". Well, they don't for most of us, but this administration has managed to put itself above the law. This is morally wrong for the reason I mentioned above, and it is a dangerous precedent for a Presidential administration to set. Accordingly, there can be no exceptions, no ambiguities and no rationalizations against this rule: There may be no torture. Torture, moreover, includes all "alternative" interrogation techniques, including waterboarding.