Replying to a message of Tony Ingenoso to Bill Lucy:

 TI> I'd like to hear your response to the following hypothetical scenario.

 TI> We've discovered a plot to plant a massive sarin bomb somewhere in the
 TI> L.A. basin  Alas, the device was determined to already be in place
 TI> but we're not sure where it is - expected body count will be well
 TI> over 100,000 if it goes off.  We know its set to detonate within 2
 TI> hours because the terrorists communicated this to further enhance
 TI> casualties trying to get people in the streets in a panic.  We know
 TI> all of this because the three terrorists who planted the bomb were
 TI> captured while making their escape from the area and willingly
 TI> confessed as much up front, but smugly refused to give the bomb's
 TI> location.

 TI> You've got 2 hours to find/defuse or well over 100,00 people die.
 TI> You've got three tangos who know exactly where it is.

 TI> What are you gonna do?  This is as black and white as it gets.  Do you
 TI> sacrifice 100,000 people so you can maintain some "moral high
 TI> ground", or do you go to work on those cockroaches with every
 TI> medieval tool and method known?  The clock is ticking.

 TI> Prior to 9-11 I would have considered this scenario to be the stuff
 TI> Hollywood scripts are made of, but in the post 9-11 world, it or
 TI> something like it has very much entered the realm of possibility.

Yes it has.  But had the regime in DC handled its foreign affairs decently
over the past quarter-century or so it would be a lot less likely.

Anyhow, high ground or not, those 100K people are dead.  The 'cockroaches'
as you call them will try to clam up at first, and under torture will tell
you whatever they think you want to hear; true of false, it makes no
difference.  But you have to determine if what they tell you is true.  That
takes time and you don't have it.  And note that, assuming 'Islamic'
terrorists, they *want* you to kill them.

Perhaps watching my 'object lesson' technique for dealing with such people
(described a week or so ago) employed on one of them might 'encourage' one
or both of the others to talk, I don't know.

Torture is a subject I'm not particularly interested in and I've done no
reading of the various studies I'm sure exist on the subject.

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