Intelligence

I have some thoughts relating to the posts below on torture - and intelligence/information theory.

Basically if you are at the point where you might consider torture you have already screwed up in a major way.

Lets take 9/11 and the aftermath.

9/11 could have been stopped if U.S. government agencies had simply communicated better. Isn't a better approach to the whole problem of terrorism simply better intel? Why aren't we focusing on that.

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

Lets go back to the 'nuclear bomb hidden in a populated area' thought experiment so popular with conservatives. Think for a minute what that would take to steal a nuclear weapon and transport it and hide it in a populated area. A typical nuclear weapon weighs hundreds of pounds or more. See:
http://www.nuclearweaponarchive.org/Usa/Weapons/Allbombs.html

Even if you could penetrate a secure facility, steal a nuclear weapon (or buy one on the black market) AND transport something that big and bulky into a city and hide it you have the problem of detonating it. Not easy. This is the biggest problem by far. See:
http://www.nuclearweaponarchive.org/Usa/Weapons/Pal.html

Two different codes have to be entered just to be able to arm a bomb with a special secret and very specific electronic signal. Then internal "environmental sensing devices" prevent detonation unless the bomb is actually delivered to the target. It actually measures "acceleration curves, temperature, pressures, etc." and  "Unless these effects are detected in the proper sequence, and fall within specified parameters, the weapon will not detonate." 

It would take a serious engineering effort to rip apart a bomb and take those safeguards out and not destroy the thing or kill yourself in the process. I'm guessing that you would have to basically rebuild it. 

If our intelligence services are so poor that a bomb could be stolen successfully AND the major engineering effort necessary to rebuild the bomb so it could be detonated went unnoticed AND the transport of the bomb to a major population center went unnoticed then god help us.

In a darwinian sense you would almost deserve to be blown up. Evolution would favor a society with a more robust defense system.

Lets get more Arabic speakers in the CIA. How about speakers of ALL major languages. Lets continually improve spy drones. Lets employ computer horsepower. There are lots of things we can do before an armed/capable nuclear bomb is ever placed in a populated area that would prevent that from ever happening in the first place.

And the bar for a biological attack is even higher. It's not clear if anyone is technically capable launching a biological attack that would not "blow back" on the attacker. Lets not be fooled by the canard that the terrorists "do not care about dying" so such a biological attack would not be problem for them. As individuals they don't care about dying but as a group they very much want to survive. The goal of Al-Qaeda is the destruction of the west and to "rid the Muslim world of any non-Muslim influences." See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Qaeda#Ideology. They very much want to survive as a group.

To frustrate their aims we must do a better job of intel and not get ourselves into a position where torture is even worth thinking about.