Comments on: Antonin Scalia Defends “Jack Bauer”

By: john

john — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 00:21:45 +0000

It is really distrubing that when a Supreme Court Justice, someone who is supposed to posess one of the finest legal and intellectual minds in our country, can’t tell the difference between a fictional TV show and reality.

By: smithee

smithee — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 16:37:32 +0000

Scalia ignores the more important question: Are you, an innocent, willing to be tortured mistakenly? How about your daughter? Your mother?

24 has shown the torture of innocents several times, including one episode where a government official authorizes the torture of his own son. The son is innocent, though there are no consequences for the torturers. On 24, there are never consequences for torturing innocents.

Scalia at least recognizes that it’s wrong for these things to be kept secret from the American people. With secret prisons and back room torture, we’re violating our own principals for no clear benefit and we are morally poorer because of it.

By: DosPeros

DosPeros — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 15:56:48 +0000

And of course, you have evidence that the U.S. military and intel agencies are shooting people in the leg for information. You have evidence that Jack Baur’s is manifest reality in US interrogation policy.

The lack of any clarity from those that disapprove of US interrogation tactics is distressing and brings to light the true motive that has nothing to do with the interrogation tactics. From what I’ve heard, nothing should be allowed. Torture would be defined in accordance with the most sensitive standard of the far-left.

I agree that the US interrogation policy should not be based on the success of a fictional character. Nor should it be based on…NOTHING, which is exactly what you seem to be proposing. BTW, George Tennet and Michael Scheuer seemed to think that our interrogation tactics DID SAVE LIVES – gosh, Justin, do you know more than Tennet and Scheuer? This whole “torture does not work ever” meme is a huge load of unsupported crap. Of course torture does not work all the time, nor does it fail all the time — you lose by overstating your arguement.

Scalia’s question is a legitimate one: If a CIA agent is charged with torture and that torture lead to the thwarting of a terrorist attack and lives are saved, what are you going to do?