Time to Torture Hasan

Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the murdering Fort Hood terrorist with links to Al Qaida, is awake, conscious and in stable condition.

Torture him. Find out everything he knows. Torture him -- he may have in formation that pertains to the life of someone you know, a family member, or maybe you or me. Torture him and make him talk.

But our cowardly government (who still wont admit this guy is a terrorist) tries to downplay this fact. They try to hide behind the ignorance of my fellow countrymen, who, unable to exercise critical thinking, buy wholesale the litany of specious arguments put forth.

Hasan has the option to speak, or face further torture. Those Americans however, who will be victims of the next attack, don't have this option. Their families, who will be tortured by their loss, don't have this option. To proselytize about the immorality of torture in the context of only one side of the equation, the terrorist's side, is a specious argument indeed, a misguided moral calculus that doesn't pit one side of the equation, against the other side (the victims and their families, who don't have the option to "speak to cease their torture.") (Further, the victims -- citizens of the United States, are NOT military personnel. The US governement does NOT have the option to trade off the lives of it's citizens versus the option of torturing one with knowledge or potential knowledge of an imminent threat to those citizens.)

This government is weak, naive, and puts us in danger. How long until a planeload of Americans is held hostage pending the release of those held at GITMO? Why are they still held? They should be tried, post-haste (which means military tribunals, of course) and set free or executed, post-haste. To keep them around in limbo is to put us in further harms way.

Similarly, there exists here a moral OBLIGATION to torture Hasan for all he knows.

-Ralph Vince