Earlier in the week, I expressed some reservations about David B. Rivkin Jr. and Lee A. Casey’s piece in the Wall Street Journal  in defense of the harsh techniques employed by the Bush administration in interrogating al Qaeda terrorists. Although I am in sympathy with Rivkin and Casey’s purpose, which is to defend methods now being employed to protect us from a second and more terrible September 11, I don’t think the case they made for such methods was particularly convincing.

But are there some instances in which almost everyone would agree that torture is an imperative? That’s a question I explore in today’s Daily Standard, the webzine of the Weekly Standard.