"If we are entitled to kill people, we must be entitled to injure them." - John Yoo

...death is worse than torture, but everyone except pacifists thinks there are circumstances in which war is justified. War means killing people. If we are entitled to kill people, we must be entitled to injure them. I don't see how it can be reasonable to have an absolute prohibition on torture when you don't have an absolute prohibition on killing. Reasonable people will disagree about when torture is justified. But that, in some circumstances, it is justified seems to me to be just moral common sense.

interview with ALASDAIR PALMER, The Spectator, published in The Gazette (Montreal) 2007  http://tinyurl.com/5bsbfw