Exceptions don’t prove the rule

Marty Peretz writes:

Torture is a repugnant practice, and especially so if it becomes a habit.  It may have become that, although I don’t know.  No one outside the alleged practitioners does.  But, believe me, I’m not trying to shrug the matter off.  Andrew Sullivan has persuaded me of its centrality to a humane society.

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Theodore Dalrymple

The real problem with mental health benefits

So far so sort of good. Then, alas, he concludes:

One last point.  The two prisoners the tapes of whose questioning were destroyed by the C.I.A. were certifiable monsters: Abu Zubaydah, an Al Qaeda planner of the 9/11 atrocity, and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the mastermind of the Aden bombing of the USS Cole in 2000.  It’s a bit strange that such monstrous men should evoke so much concern.