Reply #9: I keep forgetting how oversimplified their "reasons" are. [View All]

[patrice]

Of course there are all kinds of ways to create "plausible deniability" at all levels of terrorist operations, to keep everyone blind about the actual facts of the plan, so that they may in fact actually think that the attack IS in Peoria, when it isn't.

So relative to thinking about "the greater good", we now have the dwindling probability that any given terrorist, if tortured, will provide what you need for the greater good, relative to the increasing probability that our Troops will be tortured for useless information. Or am I just rationalizing what you just said?

It looks like it comes down to probabilities: what is the probability of their scenarios actually resulting in greater good compared to the probability of troops being tortured, and of course, BushCo is claiming just that: "We have stopped terrorism by torturing, ergo the torture of American Troops is justified."

The problem in dealing with that last argument is that everything is SECRET, so none of us can actually evaluate that statement.