So in summary:

You are saying that if it saves lives, it is ok to torture. I realize it is fun to dismiss water-boarding as a frat house antic, but if you do some research on it you will find that every person that has ever been waterboarded all reached the same conclusion. It is a TORTURE.

Instead of taking the moral high ground, you are saying "if it will save lives" it is OK.

So lets fast foward to Iran,

A recon plane flies over Iran.
They shoot it down, they torture the pilot because he might have information about emminant American attacks on their soverign nation. How many people work at a nuclear facility?

Would they be justified, by your position and logic, (Not you SS, I know you think that non-democracies have ZERO rights/justifications/reasoning to do ANYTHING) in torturing an American Pilot to prevent the bombing of their citizens?

As SS said earlier, we are NOT moral equivilants of any terrorist or Iran.
We should not LOWER our national morality for any reason.

The argument that it "saves lives" could be used to justify any atrocity you can imagine. Pro-active nuking of China = saves American lives.

Reagan didn't torture and he was dealing with 10K nuclear weapons pointed at us, not 3 airplanes.
10K nukes = don't torture.
500 Radical Muslims with Box cutters = torture????

To Rebellion,

I think the story matters because -
1) It establishes National Virtues and where we stand.
2) The story doesn't include all the people we handed over to other nations for "interrogation". We know for a fact that Egypt tortured the hell out people for us.


Ixtellor

__________________
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George W. Bush "I don't think our troops ought to be used for what's called nation-building"

Blasphemy is a victimless crime.