http://www.nationalreview.com/mccarthy/mccarthy200511280803.asp
The “Moral Authority” Canard
Senator McCain is heroic, awe-inspiring, and wrong.
By Andrew C. McCarthy
( a former federal prosecutor, is a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.)
Key Passages:
I spent a number of years in the eye of the counterterror storm: prosecuting jihadists, putting my family through the attendant anxieties, and watching the criminal-justice system writhe through what the Clinton administration called its "war" on terror — a curious battle plan in which the enemy kills you and is then presumed innocent. I came away thinking the whole prosecution paradigm was a national-security debacle.
"THE TICKING TIME BOMB
Senator McCain well knows this. That's why the most telling part of his essay is his wholly dissatisfying answer to the so-called ticking-time-bomb scenario. Yes, he admits, "if we capture a terrorist who we have sound reasons to believe possesses specific knowledge of an imminent terrorist attack ... an interrogator might well try extreme measures to extract information that could save lives." "
"But why, Senator? You just got done telling us such information would be inherently unreliable — aside from its method of extraction somehow causing our own soldiers to be tortured by the same countries that foreswore such abuse when they solemnly signed the Geneva Conventions. Why is it that we "might well" try some rough stuff?"
"The best way, the honest, bright-line way, is to acknowledge that there are circumstances in which coercive interrogation would be appropriate; to be forthright about what those circumstances are and the lengths you would be willing to go; to require personal approval by a very high-ranking executive-branch official who would then be accountable; and to prove you mean business by aggressively prosecuting anyone and anything that does not meet the rigorous standards you've taken pains to establish."