Tortured Specter?

Radio Blogger shows why (in his humble opinion) we need Arlen Specter and really succeeds in showing why he is NOT on our side. Here is his take at http://www.radioblogger.com/ :

"A little different tune. By the way, for all you who wanted to torpedo Arlen Specter as Judiciary Committee Chair (K-Lo, this means all of you on the Corner), after Gonzales finished testifying, three eggheads from academia sat down in an attempt to scuttle the nomination, using the torture policy. Specter asked a simple question to all three. If we had Mohammed Atta a day before the attacks, would torture be justified to prevent 9/11. He asked all three, and all three were immediately discredited because they either had no answer or diverted away from the question. Before any other Senator had the chance, these guys looked foolish.
Specter will eventually hose us somewhere down the line. He doesn't agree with us socially. But he is still someone you want on your side the rest of the 90% of the time. He knows how to run the committee."

"If we had Mohammed Atta a day before the attacks, would torture be justified to prevent 9/11. (sic)?
If we had Mohammed Atta a day before the attacks, would torture be justified to prevent 9/11? "

So, because Arlen Specter can score cheap points by (potentially) pointing out the hypocrisy of "eggheads," he is the man for the job at Judiciary?!? Does his question always get a yes answer? Should it? If torture is wrong, is it always wrong? (Disputations spend some time pondering this here: http://disputations.blogspot.com/. )

But shouldn't we be seriously asking the question? I think conservatives would be mad if liberals scored on such an obvious cheap shot. Clearly the matter is complicated. Clearly any quick "no" answer is going to seem either heartless or worse and any long answer (yes or no) will also seem the same. This is similar to the hypothetical asked of Dukakis about whether he would be in favor of the death penalty if his wife was raped and murdered. Though he famously blew the answer, it is an unfair question. The only correct short answer is, "Yes I would want to kill the sonofabitch quick but I would hope that the state would do so more patiently." To the torture question, the correct answer is another question, "How do you know Atta's information can help stop the attacks and if you know that how did you find it out short of torture?" or "How many people did you have to torture to find out Atta had the information you needed to stop the attacks?"

So, is Specter in favor of torture? We still don't know. He succeeded in ending an important and potentially fruitful national discussion without answering the central question himself. Specter is not on our side. We want to have the debate. We want to check our govt. including our "conservative" govt. We want our govt to err on the side of life. The hypothetical Specter places before us is not a sincere attempt to gather information. We want sincerity from our leaders. Specter is not on our side. But I'm sure "he knows how to run the committee."