And now for something completely different...

I posed this question on sciforums.com, a forum I frequent. Is freedom of enough value to justify suffering?

Case in point: waterboarding of suspected terrorists.

I have a right to be free from terrorism within the US(supposedly). My government seeks to protect my rights as a citizen by performing a non-deadly non-permanently damaging torture to evoke answers from recalcitrant detainees who are known to be willing to die to kill me.

But torture is wrong!

Is it? If a man told you someone was going to harm your family, and you thought he knew who, would you refrain from ANY means to get the information you wanted? Or is it more acceptable to allow harm to come to your family, as long as you haven't "stooped to his level"?

I'm sorry, but the government, as it stands, is required to protect its citizens at whatever cost. If a christian group started blowing things up in the US, would you want them treated differently? How about the fact that these people "declared war" on the US, making them enemy combatants? I say they should count themselves lucky to not have faced worse torture. To be honest, had the governemnt never revealed the existence of the detainees, would their fates have mattered to anyone?

I'm not even going to go into the madness of potentially prosecuting the ex-government for things the current government disapproves of. Smacks a bit of delegalizing one's opposition if you asked me.