At Which Point I Concede That I Was Wrong

I have always been against torture. To me, our country should be beyond it morally, and I never felt that it could result in positive intelligence.

I concede I was wrong in believing this, thanks to Sam Harris's book The End of Faith. In it, he justifies torture thus: would the suffering of millions by a terrorist attack be abated by the moral stance against torturing a single terrorist, one that had admitted that he/she had planted a bomb that would end the lives of millions and cause a long, painful death to countless more? Regardless of how much "true" intelligence you gain from such an individual, how can a moral society not use torture to counteract those who would willingly heap on unfathomable suffering to others. While it's a hard pill to swallow, I have to admit that I would willingly watch and advocate extreme torture for individuals for whom it was justified (ie, ones who had actual intelligence that would prevent the death and suffering of others).

And while I will concede the point, torture of a human being can be justified, I will qualify my acquiescence with this: I do not trust our current administration to administer such torture morally. It takes a truly moral society to torture morally, and we simply don't have that now. Morals derived from a series of Bronze-age stories which advocate stoning disobedient children are hardly the best starting point for dealing with barbaric terrorists with 21st-century weaponry. But that's what got us here in the first place, isn't it?