Thomas Sowell: “Critics and defenders of the harsh interrogation methods applied to captured terrorists can argue forever over whether those methods were ‘torture.’ But any serious discussion of a serious issue – and surely terrorism qualifies as serious – has to move beyond semantics and confront the ultimate question: ‘Compared to what alternative?’ If you knew that there was a hidden nuclear time bomb planted somewhere in New York City – set to go off today – and you had a captured terrorist who knew where and when, would you not do anything whatever to make him tell you where and when? Would you pause to look up the definition of ‘torture’? Would you even care what the definition of ‘torture’ was, when the alternative was seeing millions of innocent people murdered?”