The GOP's Torture Enthusiasts
By Rosa Brooks

"It wasn’t an edifying spectacle: a group of middle-aged white guys competing with one another to see who could do the best impersonation of Jack Bauer, torture enthusiast and the central character on Fox's hit show "24."

In Tuesday's Republican presidential primary debate, Fox News moderator Brit Hume — who appears to have been watching too much "24" himself — raised what he described as "a fictional but we think plausible scenario involving terrorism and the response to it." He then laid out the kind of "ticking-bomb" scenario on which virtually every episode of "24" is premised — precisely the kind that most intelligence experts consider fictional and entirely implausible.

Imagine, Hume told the candidates, that hundreds of Americans have been killed in three major suicide bombings and "a fourth attack has been averted when the attackers were captured … and taken to Guantanamo…. U.S. intelligence believes that another, larger attack is planned…. How aggressively would you interrogate" the captured suspects?

Rudy Giuliani — a man who knows he has a few cross-dressing episodes to live down — didn't hesitate. "I would tell the [interrogators] to use every method…. It shouldn't be torture, but every method they can think of."

"Water-boarding?" asked Hume.

"I would — and I would — well, I'd say every method they could think of," affirmed Giuliani……

… For Rosa Brooks’ complete Op-Ed column, see Secrets of 24, Chapter 4