Sensory deprivation? Electric shock? Asphyxiation? Perhaps a prisoner's testicles dangled into a cage of hungry badgers? The way a pair of Aussies see it, this sort of thing should not only be endorsed by governments around the world, it's their moral responsibility. Even more disturbing is that the two teach law.

In a paper to be published in the University of California Law Review, Australia's Deakin University School of Law head Mirko Bagaric and confrère Julie Clarke argue that not torturing terror suspects "verges on moral indecency." Entitled "Not Enough (Official) Torture in the World?," the paper suggests that protecting the lives of one's own people gives the government the right to inflict "all forms of harm" on a suspect, even to the point of "annihilation." And Bagaric says interrogators shouldn't be deterred from torturing innocents who may hold pertinent information. Just because the tortured party isn't actually a "wrongdoer" involved in the planning of some terrible attack "doesn't mean they can wash their hands of responsibility."

» Scott Saxon