[jyl]

I'd say use those brutal tactics if and whenthey really work.

The first problem is, I think they are often applied when they don't work.

Abusing and killing prisoners in Iraqi prisons, quasi-torture in Guantanamo (sp) Bay - notice how many of those supposed dangerous terrorists have been released, and how there doesn't seem to be much evidence against others.

Going back in history, recall all the torture and killings that US agents committed, sometimes directly but more often by proxy (think CIA in South America) - did they really change history for the better?

Definitely, I think that assassination, sabotage. questioning through torture, etc can indeed work and should be used in some situations.

When the Israelis locate a terrorist bomb factory, sending a missile through the window makes sense to me. When we locate a terrorist training camp, we should do the same. If we manage to snatch, say, a North Korean weapons scientist, well, I'm not going to be too concerned about how we made him talk.

But it seems that those opportunities are going to be fairly limited. And thus the frequency with which you use brutal methods should also be pretty limited.

The second problem is that there is a practical cost to brutal tactics.

They do huge damage to our standing and image in the world. Okay, the macho American reaction is "F those [insert foreign nationality here], who cares what they think". So let's think about it.

Do you think whatever intelligence value we got out of abusing and killing prisoners in that Iraqi prison outweighed the boost that we gave to the recruiting efforts of the insurgency in Iraq and Islamic terroists all over the world?

Do you realize that one reason the so-called "coalition of the willing" is pulling their troops out of Iraq is because their citizens are deeply opposed to the war, and one reason for that deep opposition is the damage that the US has done to its own global image?

So you've got to balance the pros with the cons.

Put it another way, if we're covertly using brutal tactics on a small number of carefully targeted people, that probably makes sense. If we're publicly using brutal tactics on thousands and thousands of people who we picked up during sweeps in Afghanistan and Iraq, that is probably a sign that we are doing something wrong.