Again, Apples and Oranges

I'm not impressed with the recent argument that if we can shoot Osama bin Laden in the head, why couldn't we waterboard him for information?

While I don't believe waterboarding is torture and that it should be allowed in extreme situations, comparing shooting someone during war in combat and interrogating someone in our custody are two different things and requires different measures of right and wrong.

Just as the complaints that we should have tried Osama bin Laden in a court the way we did Nazis after we won World War II ignore the difference between the time during war and the time after war, the shooting/waterboarding question ignores the fact that once you capture someone the rules completely change.

By the logic of the shooting/waterboarding question, what couldn't we do to a prisoner rather than shooting them that wouldn't be better than death? The sky's the limit, eh?

I have no qualms about shooting enemies. I don't think we should torture captured enemies. I do think we can use measures that fall short of torture in extreme situations to save lives. And it is obviously appropriate to debate where the line falls between extreme measures and torture. It is even appropriate to decide that waterboarding is not appropriate, whether or not it is torture.