Like you, I believe that the only way the US can fully assert her leadership in this world is to remain on the moral high ground. Torture is a short-sighted tactic that does much more harm than good. We cannot get in the muck with our dishonorable enemies...there is no telling how far down in immorality they are willing to take us.

My great respect for you Michael compels me to agree with you. I am sure you know better then I regarding this subject. But would someone beside the government bureaucrats, who would not leave their desks to help anyone for any reason, be allowed to define then hows and whys of any policy that is applied to the individuals doing the difficult job they are doing. The use of the Army Field Manual by a seasoned intelligence officer is like allowing a rookie police officer investigate and question individuals charged with rape and homicide. The word torture is is so loaded ill defined that it can mean anything to anyone.

While I agree that we must remain "the good guys" as an institution, I also understand as a soldier, medic and an interpreter the need to do what must be done to preserve the lives of my soldiers. I agree that as an interrogation tool torture is wrong. But what of the commander who's troops are about to run over an IED or walk into an ambush? Should he or she torture or threaten the life of a captured insurgent to save the lives of US troops? As a medic and I'm done attending memorial services and would personally not do so at the expense of meeting the moral standards of civilians back home who have no grasp of what a final roll call service is like.

In addition to Chackern's "save us Julius, save up Adolph", I must add "save us Barack".
On to the subject of torture. Having been to Navy SERE school and subjected to waterboarding and other "uncomfortable" situations, I think we should not administer any interrogation techniques that our own troops don't go through during training.
Also, John McCain said we do not get reliable information through torture, but our instructors taught us not to lie because: a) you have to remember your lie, and b) if the enemy finds out you were lying, the treatment will be worse. If anyone knows about torture, it's John McCain, but SERE training was developed after our POW's returned from Vietnam. Just my 2 cents.

Just questions ... no answers

1. if we do torture or if we dont does it actually have anything to do with with how our POW's are treated?

2. If torture provided information that thwarted the detonation of a nuke in the US would that be ok or would torture to save 300,000 still not be ok?

3. If torture prevented the detonation of a nuke in the city were your family lives .... worth it then?

4. If torture prevented the rape and beheading of your wife and daughter while you watched ... worth it then?

I'm not buying it Michael. Since when do humiliation and insult equate to torture? Waterboarding may be at the extreme end of what we do, but where is the mutilation and murder that real torturers use?

The looney left in the USA has left us nothing but rendition to and your retreat to the "moral high ground" is BS. Remember to eat your words when the terrorist nuke goes off in the States, Michael. After all terrorists are not a threat, carbon dioxide is.

First of all, it is evident that in Michael Yon we all have a source of knowledge and experience that is extra-ordinary, and we have come to respect all that he does. His opinions help shape ours, and thank goodness for him.
But, at age 84, I have an oversight too, and as a Merchant Seaman in my youth, I did some extra-ordinary traveling and gained some experience as well.
Yet, from the time I was able to read, I had another experience, that of a reader, not of great novels (well, those too), but from the fact that my father brought home three to four newspapers a day and my brother and I delivered two others locally. We read them, many from cover to cover, My son today buys and reads three to four newspaper a day.
What is it we're supposed to do as a nation different than the others? We're already on high moral ground, but I still say "self-preservation" at times requires that we take the necessary means to do just that. At times it may hurt, at times we may wince, but that's part of life.
I don't recall anyone recommending extreme torture in their answers to Michael, and neither did I. Back in WWII, the Japanese submarine Captains time and again ordered that their men machine gunned life-boats, or they took the whole crew prisoner, then bayoneted or beheaded them. That's a fact. Our ship was torpedoed by a Japanest sub in the Indian Ocean, but luckily for us, it was a dud, but in port a diver verified the dent in the hull. It was a vicious enemy, just as we keep encountering in war again and again. There may be times when stronger measures may be deemed necessary, and again, no one can ever deny that additional pressure to obtain vital information, at times, in the past may have resulted in saved lives, victories won, wars even won.
Tell me, what are the exact parameters of "the moral high-ground" and who has set them? Obviously Daniel Peart was up there, but then, with some animals in human form, that's something they don't recognize.
Where's the moral high-ground in Mexico, for example? All the good guys, as soon as they take office, are exterminated as are their families. Bodies, some perhaps not yet dead, were dissolved in acid, 300 of them. How much persuasion should be used to obtain the location of Drug Cartel headquarters from a captured mercenary?
Nah, I'm not recommending or disallowing some means deemed a bit extreme, but I say the "moral high-ground" as some see it might be an illusion that we can ill-afford. It's a stance that could prove just as fatal as ptomaine poisoning.

Michaell, in your second statement responding to the uproar over your torture comment, I think you are being very unfair to your critics. I didn't see any evidence of someone trying to be "tough" or talking about wholesale torture. It is legitimate to discuss what constitutes torture, whether there are appropriate times when it can be used, and how can we elicit information from--let's face it--bad guys.

The question that you have to answer is whether it was legitimate to waterboard Khaled to get the information that avoided a number of terrorist acts. If you are black and white, then you would have done nothing. I can't agree with that. And I don't think that makes me a Nazi (as implied by some of the comments above).

Frankly, I think there is less "torture" going on than in some Jerry Bruckheimer TV shows.

In Great Britain in WWII it came to light that an interrogation centre was using torture to extract information from German prisoners. A report was sent to Churchill. The centre was kept open. The information the centre was getting was far too useful to close.

I deeply admire the work you do Mr Yon, and will continue contributing when I may, but you have insulted your readers by saying many support the use of torture because it 'makes us look tough' and that "wholesale torture" is advocated.

Our enemy uses torture and broadcasts it to instill fear in the civilised world. If and when we have used torture it has been to save innocent lives. It takes none of the moral high ground away from us, it just enables us to defend civlisation better.

For me, gaining information through very strong methods, to include waterboarding, that would save the GOOD from the EVIL IS justified--for that is the REAL MORAL ISSUE.

Maiming, or permanently disabling a captured human to gain such information is not justified--but fear and extreme discomfort is, in my view.

And I am tough, Mr Yon, but that has nothing to do with my views on these extreme, but moral, measures; I just value the good more than I value the evil.

How can we possibly condone such double-think as considering ourselves so morally superior that we can justify such a base action. Isn't that making us immoral? The strength of a society is measured by how it defends its values when they are under attack. The terrorists hate our morals and values, and people believe that therefore we must ignore them completely. Isn't our duty to defend them during times of hardship? What are we fighting for if we are just as bad as the terrorists? Don't you dare claim that we can torture because we are morally superior, because those two things are not reconcilable. We are not the good guys if we behave like the bad guys.

V S Naipaul's book The Loss of Eldarado on the history of Trinidad tells of a peculiar period in the 1830s when the island had a British governor who ruled under Spanish law. In the matter of torture there was a direct conflict between the British and Spanish law. The British law said that the testimony of a slave was unreliable if coerced by torture. The Spanish law took the view that the testimony could not be trusted unless it was extracted by torture. I think of those two legal approaches as constituting the interrogator's dilemma. You can get bad information from pushing too hard or not hard enough. The appropriate treatment and approach will vary from prisoner to prisoner. I don't know enough to do the job but I have some appreciation of the difficulties involved. I expect to be strongly pressured by police if they suspect me of something significant and I know as long as I live I will be subject to having pain inflicted on me. So I don't expect torture to go away. What the US does - try to define torture and then not exceed the guidelines is about as good as you can do. The rule that you don't expose prisoners to anything that your soldiers don't experience in training seems another appropriate limitation. I also want to say that I don't read Michael because I agree with him. I read him because I can rely on him to tell the truth as he sees it. I can't do that with the MSM, so to me it is a small matter if I disagree with him on some point or other. He understands his subject and doesn't distort what he experiences to fit a predictable narrative. I see his work as closer to raw intelligence - not the whole picture but reliable and accurate dispatches.