Torture - for or against? Waterboarding or 28 dead on a tube train. Which is it to be? People held for 11 years without trial, interrogated by the Americans and the Israelis - both no slouches at the job - and nothing gained except worldwide revulsion.
An SAS expert says the only useful information will be garnered in the first 48 hours. After that all plans will be changed, locations re-arranged, so your man in the cells is no longer in the loop.
Yet he may still have massive influence and be a huge danger to innocents.What to do? How about admitting that some people need to be made to talk if lives are to be saved? Some techniques can be seen to work.
But there is a time limit. Hardened souls may not break. You can't let them go. You can't bring them to court if that means revealing information that only a spy still in the camp could have given you. You can't risk them either.
But you can stop the horror. You can keep this person away from the world. He, and increasingly she, will no longer be useful to the bad guys. It's a terrible choice, but to carry on torturing regardless of benefit shames us all.
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