Very thought provoking article. AF COL John Boyd postulated three levels of war — moral, mental, and physical, and that the moral level was supreme. If we formulate a strategy that is effective at the physical and mental levels, but fails on the moral level, then we are doomed to defeat. Utilitarian ideas, like the Dershowitz argument mentioned, are problematic in their assumptions. How does one ever really know that an attack is imminent, or that the suspect to be tortured has relevant knowledge? In the murky real world such absolute knowledge is rare, so the decision to torture means that one may be uselessly torturing an innocent individual — and once that act of torture becomes known then we have not only violated our national values but also, pragmatically speaking, suffered a defeat morally. It seems that deontological arguments and adhering to our values as a condition of good strategy is better course. Thorny issues.