Don’t you find it a little odd that Mary Creagh, the Labour MP who is worried that we all might burn ourselves has never formally objected to a government that approves of boiling people alive? Perhaps she thinks that if……

The truth always outs in the end. The question that always needs asking though, whenever that day comes, is “why did it take so long?”.

I am not in favour of torture except in the one in a million chance of a ticking bomb scenario which never occurs outside of film studios.

So you will torture a million for the one chance it will be successful?

I share your doubts concerning the efficiency of our security services. Nevertheless, on the domestic scene we have stumbled into a bugger’s muddle over the treatment of suspected terrorists by allowing the authorities to make it up, in secret, as they go along. In the USA they have the semi-secret Guantanamo, and over here we have Sir Ian Blair’s secret policy of shoot to kill.

However, we also have our police saddled with nonsensical rules of interrogation loaded in favour of the recalcitrant prisoners and the fee-seeking lawyers behind them.

I am not in favour of torture except in the one in a million chance of a ticking bomb scenario which never occurs outside of film studios. However, I am in favour of harsh treatment, that is, treatment from which a healthy man or woman would recover within hours, if not minutes of its cessation, administered to terrorist suspects in order to elicit information. None of it should be used in a court of law.

This war will be won or lost on intelligence. It is time the British (and American) public were engaged in a debate on the methods to be adopted in dealing with terrorist suspects so that a clear policy can be put in place.

I like the way I’m called Paddy too.

David, I suspect the only point that you and I agree on is the wisdom of commenting under an assumed name.

I’m against any use of information obtained by torture, and sending suspects to regimes that torture, because I think that any attempt to implement an “only as a last resort to save lives” rule isn’t going to work, and plenty of innocent people would end up being tortured and few lives saved as a result. I believe that actual instances where torturing somebody would be the only way to save lives are rare, but God knows why I think I know that. But I think it’s a pretty finely balanced issue, and even though I’m against it, I think wanting a “torture only in exceptional circumstances” rule is understandable and, arguably, moral. If life was like an episode of 24 and Keifer has the guy in front of him who knows where the nuclear bomb hidden in downtown LA is, but who isn’t gonna talk, then I’d think again. Perhaps life is more like that than I imagine. David, you think so, I assume. I reckon the reality is more usually the secret services (in whatever country we are either sending suspects to or receiving information from) end up pulling in the wrong guy then pulling his finger nails out.

Does anybody claim that those poor buggers pulled apart in an Uzbek cellar were in possession of the sort of information that could ever justify what was done to them?

People like ‘ff’ and our genial host don’t actually have a country of their own. They inhabit a sort of Never-Never Land of fairy tales and myths peopled entirely by good-natured folk who would never dream of harming a hair on their heads. Their metaphorical grandfathers probably voted never to fight for king and country at the Cambridge Union in the 1930s.

In the meantime, they no doubt expect our MI6 officers serving in ‘Gangsterland’, ie, most of the rest of the world, to jam their fingers in their ears and shout loudly “RAH RAH RAH RAH” to stop themselves from hearing any titbits of information lest they were obtained by means considered objectionable by Amnesty International.

There are times when I wish the Islamo-fascists would succeed in over-running the West just for my joy at seeing the likes of ‘ff’ receiving a dose of what they’re too feeble to fight against.

I like the way he is called “Paddy”.

Paddy, have you ever heard of “diplomacy” and “human rights”?

I hope your christmas was merry.

As you know, I think I’m on your side of this issue, but I still think that here you are not giving proper credit to the counter arguments.

Maybe information used “operationally” to “thwart” recent terrorist attacks was obtained by torture and so “perfectly lawful”. Are our “freedoms” being bought with the suffering of others?

Well if terrorist attacks have been thwarted using information obtained by torture, it’s not our ‘freedoms’ that have been bought is it? It’s lives that have been saved – people who were not blown to smithereens by nail bombs that would have been – this is (perhaps) what has been bought with the suffering of others. Others who were involved in planning to blow people up.

You are rightly horrified at the thought of people being tortured, but surely you are equally horrified at the thought of people being blown to bits on buses. If more attacks on London really have been thwarted – doesn’t that make you think twice about all this?

If you think that torture is sometimes justifiable, this is precisely the circumstances in which it is justifiable – to thwart terrorist attacks and save lives. But you’re argument seems to just dismiss this possibilty out of hand.

I think you have to acknowledge that a decision to not ever use information obtained under torture might well result in some people being blown to bits that could have been saved. You have to acknowledge that and still show that making any sort of accomodation with torture is – on balance – wrong.

What a vertigo-inducing moral wilderness Straw exists in. It’s a place where “torture is completely unacceptable” except when it isn’t. I bet Jack would get rather upset if you violated one of his family members with a broken bottle. But women in Uzbekistan? Well, what are you going to do? It’s a real area of moral hazard.

It’s not a moral wilderness, it’s a moral quagmire and it’s the same one that we all occupy, I think, on all sides of the debate. Because both sides involve people getting tortured or not, blown up or not, and it’s a matter of picking this least horrible moral compromise.

Jack Straw’s “except when it isn’t” is (I hope) “except when it might save lives” and you can flip the argument around and ask what sort of moral wilderness those who oppose any use of information obtained under torture [you & perhaps me] live in, when they advocate a policy that would not save lives where lives might have been saved. People blown to bits on buses? What are you gonna do?

Although you never state it, your argument implies (I think) that innocent people being tortured is reality (and I don’t dispute that) but that the terrorist threat, and the possibilty of the security services using information obtained under torture being able to thwart it, is an invention. I’d like to see you expand on that point.