Judge Scalia: "So-called Torture" Cannot be Ruled Out

One of the United States' top judges said in an interview broadcast in Britain last week, that interrogators can inflict pain to obtain information about an imminent terrorist threat. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia said that aggressive interrogation could be appropriate to learn where a bomb was hidden shortly before it was set to explode or to discover the plans or whereabouts of a terrorist group. He said that it seemed to him you have to say, as unlikely as it is, that it would be absurd to say you couldn't, stick something under the fingernail, smack him in the face. It would be absurd to say you couldn't do that he said. Scalia said that determining when physical coercion could come into play was a difficult question. "How close does the threat have to be? And how severe can the infliction of pain be? I don't think these are easy questions at all, in either direction," he told the BBC's "Law in Action" program.