The biggest problem with the Bush Administration policies toward human and civil rights is that they attempt to institutionalize practices that have been proven to be vulnerable to extremes in human nature.
Torture is the most corosive of these. Many people know of the Stanley Milgram experiment in the 1960's with Yale student admistering electric shocks to other students and just how suprisingly far they would go.
I think the ticking bomb is a false argument. In a case where there is information about a dirty bomb located somehwere ready to go off, most people would say all bets are off and we need to find this weapon. The problem is when you institutionalize torture as a legitimate means of interogation. The potential for abuse at a variety levels makes it unmanagable.
This same kind of abuse is evident in the FBI handling of "National Security Letters". Which might as well be called "Umwarrented Search Letters",
I wonder how many of these might have been to check on an ex-wife? We'll never know the didn't keep very good records, Surprise!
