In short, liberal scruples about morality, legality, and international torture conventions are foolish and irresponsible.

Let s examine the illness that leads certain EU leaders with questionable scruples to forget even the recent past.

Leaders would prefer to speak in the language of readily calculable interests. Talk of care and moral scruples is uncomfortable and unstable terrain.

Nobody likes to torture, but security is more important than moral scruples, and the laws will simply have to be adjusted or finessed.