Ethics

Andrew McCarthy's Confusion on Torture and Intent

By Ed Brayton

The National Review's Andrew McCarthy is making a profoundly confused argument about torture and intent. He first started to make this argument a few weeks ago and he continues it in a second column a few days ago. The argument essentially says that under U.S. law, any action taken against a detainee cannot be considered torture unless it was taken with the specific intention of being sadistic. If it was done for some other purpose, like obtaining information, then it isn't torture at all.

Full post as published by Dispatches from the Culture Wars on June 02, 2009 (boomark / email).