Killings Are the Moral Choice?

The Washington Post has chimed in with its own 'the killing of Bin Laden doesn't justify torture' editorial. It's better than most, but still has serious flaws. This bit is puzzling (emphasis added):

Most interrogation experts say that the only way to extract reliable information is through noncoercive means, including building rapport with suspects over time. Torture may sometimes elicit true statements, but it often elicits falsehoods — and there are suggestions in this case that coercive techniques led to inaccurate information, including attempts by detainees to throw interrogators off the track of a valued bin Laden courier. 

I don't know what the difference between "reliable" and "true" is - the Post never says. But, how can coercion produce "true statements" but only noncoercive methods can "extract reliable information"? Does reliable mean you don't have to confirm the info? Who believes that noncoercive techniques can produce a witness whose statements never need confirming and is always correct? If both the coerced and noncoerced prisoner has to have his story checked out, how is it that the noncoerced can be deemed reliable? I really don't know what the Post is saying here. They even imply that only coercion produces falsehoods. Who believes that?

The Post continues: 

Moreover, it is quite possible, though not certain, that reliance on more traditional [noncoercive] methods would have produced the same results had interrogators stuck to them.

It's also possible that if America never interrogated anyone, Bin Laden would have turned himself in. The Post's argument goes nowhere. Here's more dead ends:

Even if waterboarding or extreme sleep deprivation produced some pieces of the bin Laden intelligence puzzle, the program wasn’t justified — and it still did America far more harm than good. ...

What is clear is that the country paid dearly for employing methods that are not only wrongheaded but wrong. Its reputation was scarred and its moral authority diminished around the world.

Why wasn't the program justified? The Post never says aside from claiming it was wrong and diminished America's moral authority? Why was her moral authority diminished? Because the program wasn't justified and wrong. Why was it wrong? Because it wasn't justified and diminished America's moral authority. Why did the program do more harm than good? Because it scarred America's reputation. Why did it scar America's reputation? Because it wasn't justified. Why wasn't it justified? Because the program did more harm than good.

Clearly, America needed to reject coercion.

But a rejection of torture should not mean a reluctance to capture and interrogate terrorism suspects. Yet the country has no clear legal framework to handle captives who may be dangerous but cannot be charged with a crime in U.S. courts.

Bush put together a legal framework. Obama and the Post opposed it and dismantled parts of it. What should America do now? Maybe the Post has some advice?

The president should work with Congress to erect a detention framework that is overseen by the federal courts, provides legal protections to detainees and lets the United States lawfully and humanely gather information that could help thwart the next attack.

That's it? Ten years into the Global War on Terror, and twenty-eight months into the Obama Administration, and that's the Post's vague advice?

If the United States don't have a framework for detention and interrogation, what's been happening instead?

Rather than apprehend suspects, this administration has outpaced its predecessor in the use of drone strikes. Just this week, the administration confirmed that it struck two suspected al-Qaeda operatives in Yemen. Such strikes are a lawful means of national self-defense, but by relying on them potentially important intelligence information is lost. 

So, instead of waterboarding people, Obama is executing them from the sky. Why is he doing this? He's preserving America's moral authority.