Ticking Bombs and Slippery Slopes: "Letting ticking-bomb scenarios set the terms of debate also diverts our attention from the real challenges of the war on terror. Torture is always a weapon of the weak: It's used by those too clumsy to get information any other way. If we had better human-intelligence agents on the ground, with the cultural skills needed to gain the trust of local populations, we wouldn't need illegal interrogation methods to gain information. And if we got serious about preventing the abuse of detainees, we might find more friends when we look for information.
Long before 9/11, ticking-bomb scenarios were a stock feature of undergraduate ethics classes. They're a fine trick for generating student discussion. But they shouldn't be used to inform U.S. law and policy. "
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