For the longest time I've questioned the morality of torture vs the effectiveness of it. Having never been a POW myself I really have no leg to stand on, but for what it's worth here's my 2 cents/devil's advocacy:

My question is this: If it's ok to shoot the enemy, or threaten to shoot him if he fails to surrender, why is it not ok to beat him senseless to find out his cohorts? If it's ok for these terrorists to drive a microbus full of high explosives into a marine mess hall and detonate, why is it not ok for us to sleep-deprive, humiliate, and inflict pain to garner intelligence?

A sound argument against this is that we would be reducing ourselves to their level...but isn't that also how wars are successfully fought and won? I wonder how they'd react in khabul if we were to autopilot a 747 into one of their commercial centers? We react with 'kill them, kill them all' to the horrors of 9/11 (and so we should), but then we become aghast at the actions necessary to conduct such a war? Folks, times have changed, warfare has changed. Since Veitnam we honestly don't know if the kid running toward us is loaded with HE or a friendly, and can't truly tell until he explodes and takes out half a division of soldiers. Wouldn't it bring much less grief and bloodshed to us by gathering such information from the enemy by whatever means? Geneva Convention? Yah, ok.... enemies of the US haven't adhered to GC since WWII.

Again playing devil's advocate to initiate support, response, and thought on the issue, I say we fold, spindle, mutilate, inflict pain upon, humiliate, sleep/food deprive, or whatever it takes to get these terrorists spilling the information the possess.

Ok, I'm backed off my position, and once again don't get personal here - this is a devil's advocate situation - I *do* have my arguments against this, but I'd love to hear yours first. Thanks for the input!