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I am willing to give you a flat unequivocal no to this question. Torture as an interrogation technique is never "Justified".

Now I will put you in a hypothetical situation. A child had been kidnapped and is being held in danger of their life. You have in front of you one of the people who did it and that person could tell you where that child is. You are working under a severe time shortage. Would you resort to torture to gain the location of that child? No? Well what if it were your child?

Me? If in that place, I judged that I had a perpetrator in front of me, and a child in danger of dying shortly, that man is about to have a very rough and torturous few minutes until he gives me that child's location.

Would I be right to do it? No. But I would face my bosses, a jury of my peers and God if necessary for my sins in this matter before I would stand sinless and pure while a child died.

That hypothetical is meant to point out that sometimes situations do not allow you to come down with a morally correct answer, particularly out there on the sharp end of the spear. Sometimes you just have to decide which horror you are willing to share your midnights and your George Dickel with.

Again, I am saying that torture can never be justified, meaning made just, and writing it into public policy is not only unjustified it is an abomination. Policy in this context, means what we intend to do in every day situations, it means what we support and what we want to be when we are at our best. I think, in all things, our policy should reflect our principles.

So how do I reconcile my stand on the child molester and my stand against torture? You need to understand I judge these things from the point of view of a former field operator. A field operator knows that no plan survives initial contact with the enemy. The same thing can apply to policy.

And, as a former field operator, I will tell you also that if it falls on me to commit an abomination that risks my immortal soul, I would really rather be doing it in the name of principles and a people that are better than what I am doing.

Writing torture into public policy makes that doubtful.

Learn more about this author, Edward Hall.
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