Twisted

It sorta painful, in a metaphysical sense, watching people twist themselves into pretzels as they try to justify torturing people. TBogg quotes Andy McCarthy writing at The Corner:

The pertinent question is whether the interrogations gave us valuable information about al Qaeda that we wouldn't have gotten, in a timely manner, without it. Information about a specific imminent terrorist attack would have been nice too. In my mind, we should never resort to enhanced measures unless we believe in good faith that attacks are being planned and possibly imminent. But obtaining intelligence about a specific imminent attack would not have been necessary to validate the use of the enhanced measures. . . .
Whether the enhanced measures are validly used, moreover, has to be determined by the threat situation before the enhanced measures are employed. Sure, it's crucial to study the quality of the information the tactics yielded in making the policy decision of whether they should ever be used. Once you decide to have them in your arsenal, however, the determination of whether they were properly employed on any one occasion has to hinge on the situation that existed before you decided to use them, . . .

TBogg adds:

Did you get all that? He's against torture except not.
...and that "Information about a specific imminent terrorist attack would have been nice too" is a lovely touch. It's like a grace note for sociopaths.

Oh, and by the way, using a term "enhanced measures" instead of "torture" is like a drug addict calling heroin "my medication". George Orwell would laugh.