Economics and similar, for the sleep-deprived
A subtle change has been made to the comments links, so they no longer pop up. Does this in any way help with the problem about comments not appearing on permalinked posts, readers?
Update: seemingly not
Update: Oh yeah!
Tuesday, May 03, 2011
Ticking time bombs, slippery slopes
I notice that we are apparently having a minor debate about whether the intelligence which led to the mission to kill Osama bin Laden was obtained by torture. More worryingly, we are having this debate in terms which imply that some moral conclusion one way or another might be established if it was; that if waterboarding prisoners led us to being able to kill bin Laden, this might go some way toward justifying waterboarding. We're quite a long way from imminent nuclear explosions here aren't we?
I suppose that there might be utilitarians who might swallow the bullet and say that there might be occasions on which it was morally right to torture a prisoner if doing so could produce information which might lead to a really good party for a sufficiently large number of people. But I don't think it's the mainstream position.
Edit: Furthermore, in my opinion, if you've taken ten years to find a guy hiding in plain view, you've got a bit of a bloody brass neck trying to claim "my finding technique is unstoppable!" and demanding that nobody ask questions about your methods because dammit you get results!
this item posted by the management 5/03/2011 03:57:00 PM
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