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>>There are few absolutes in this, but I do know a lot of people with responsibility for security really do wrestle with the moral issues involved.
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>I have no doubt that is true. Unfortunately those responsible for setting policy, the ones who decided a little torture is OK now, do not seem to be among them. Nor are they accountable. Even when Congress subpoenas them to testify they just blow it off, claiming executive privilege. IOW, our own permission is all we need.

I agree it is always hard to determine the line between taking moral responsibility and just being arrogant in the exercise of power.

Sometimes deferring one's own judgment to the judgment of someone else is just sloughing off responsibility. "I was only following orders" can work a number of different ways. Sometimes the order might be to *not* shoot and the safe choice is to follow orders.

Hard to tell from the outside sometimes which is the case. A good example is Richard Helms. There isn't a doubt in my mind he felt he was exercising honorable judgment in deceiving the Congressional committee - and was willing to take the hit. But I also don't doubt some of those who went after him believed a higher principle was involved in making sure elected representatives exercised oversight.

In an ideal situation, all the spooks are always doing the right thing and all the politicians can be trusted to put the country's interests ahead of their own ambitions... but the tricky part is defining all those words.

The only thing I know for sure is that the arguments are so complex and sometime morally ambiguous that the surest way to be wrong is to be sure.