Kerry Spot    [ jim geraghty reporting ]
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I think Instapundit’s assessment is correct: If the Democrats try to start a high-profile debate on torture, “coercive interrogation” and related issues, the discussion will quickly devolve into partisan name-calling, and voters who were already skeptical about whether the Democrats are “tough enough” in the war on terror will consider them “soft.”

I would hope that as the public debates torture, they consider two seemingly contradictory, gut-level ideas:

1) Only a fool would get up on a high horse and declare, “Well, I would never endorse or support torture.” It recalls Michael Dukakis’ antiseptic reaction and jargon-heavy answer to Bernard Shaw’s question about whether he would support the death penalty for someone who raped and murdered his wife. If you or I found ourselves in a room with Zarqawi, Zawahiri, or bin Laden, and that person had refused to divulge information that could save lives, can anyone rule out with 100 percent certainty what they would be willing to do to get that information? What if one of the lives at stake was a loved one?

2) Lest that emotional response to the “ticking bomb scenario” sounds too much like a full-throated hurrah for torture, let us also stipulate that deliberately inflicting pain in a captive individual is a wearying, soul-searing, if not soul-destroying effort. And as the torture opponents eloquently argue, it’s not what we want to be as a nation. And, of course, the reliability of information extracted during torture can be wrong.

All of this gets muddled in a related debate, about whether the Geneva Convention applies to al-Qaeda. One can oppose the use of torture to extract information, and still contend that the Geneva Convention doesn’t apply to captured terrorists. See Jonah and Rich .

[Posted 01/05 12:12 PM]