Torture works on 24, but not for real

You don’t protect the innocent by ‘breaking’ defenceless prisoners, says matthew carr

We are all familiar with the scenario. A bomb is timed to explode in 24 hours and the counter-terrorist agent has caught the terrorist who knows where it is. Thousands of innocent people will die unless the terrorist reveals his secret.

Fortunately, in the post 9/11 world, our agent has various options. He might begin with some 'forceful interrogation' and stress positions. He might try 'water-boarding' a variant on techniques used in the Inquisition and by the Khmer Rouge, in which the prisoner's nose is blocked while water is forced down his throat to create the sensation of drowning.

The agent might use 'Cold Cell' and subject the prisoner to extremes of temperature in order to inculcate hypothermia. He might, as the American pro-torture lawyer Alan Dershowitz advocates, insert metal slivers

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a 9/11 ringleader, is believed to have confessed under torture

beneath the prisoner's fingernails. Or like Jack Bauer, hero of the hit television series 24, he might break the suspect's fingers or apply electrodes to his nipples.

All these methods stem from a desire to protect the innocent and not from sadism or brutality. Like Jack Bauer, our torturer is a good guy who has made what Dershowitz calls a 'tragic choice' facing democracies in the new era of catastrophic terrorism.

However, while the 'ticking bomb' has been a recurring justification for torture in terrorist emergencies, the dilemma - do you torture one man to save thousands of lives? - is rarely as stark as my scenario suggests.

In most cases, the process of 'breaking' a defenceless prisoner is an expression of power and domination. As critics of the French army in Algeria once recognised, torture degrades both the torturer and the victim, and short-term counter-terrorist benefits are negated by political defeat.

A similar dynamic has unfolded in the current 'war on terror', where America's claims to moral leadership have been fatally