Neal Ascherson has a new* article here.

*First published on 18 May 2006 but as far as I can tell, only made generally available on intertubes for the first time now.

Alan Dershowitz’s advocacy of new rules to codify pre-emptive state attacks in the era of “war on terror” is partisan sophistry with chilling historical echoes…[.]

I think I tend towards agreement with him (Ascherson that is).

I also agree with Zizek when he said…

Even the ‘liberal’ argument cited by Alan Dershowitz is suspect: ‘I’m not in favour of torture, but if you’re going to have it, it should damn well have court approval.’ When, taking this line a step further, Dershowitz suggests that torture in the ‘ticking clock’ situation is not directed at the prisoner’s rights as an accused person (the information obtained will not be used in the trial against him, and the torture itself would not formally count as punishment), the underlying premise is even more disturbing, implying as it does that one should be allowed to torture people not as part of a deserved punishment, but simply because they know something. Why not go further still and legalise the torture of prisoners of war who may have information which could save the lives of hundreds of our soldiers? If the choice is between Dershowitz’s liberal ‘honesty’ and old-fashioned ‘hypocrisy’, we’d be better off sticking with ‘hypocrisy’. I can well imagine that, in a particular situation, confronted with the proverbial ‘prisoner who knows’, whose words can save thousands, I might decide in favour of torture; however, even (or, rather, precisely) in a case such as this, it is absolutely crucial that one does not elevate this desperate choice into a universal principle: given the unavoidable and brutal urgency of the moment, one should simply do it. Only in this way, in the very prohibition against elevating what we have done into a universal principle, do we retain a sense of guilt, an awareness of the inadmissibility of what we have done.

Which is all analogous to Scoop’s post below I reckon. That is — don’t rely on fucking lawyers for guidance on anything except how to ‘get off’ stuff that you are guilty as fuck of.