This week we have been shocked by revelations of the abuse of Iraqi citizens detained by U.S. forces in Iraq. In an extraordinary move, the president and his advisers have gone on Arabic language TV in an awkward effort to explain their disappointment with the behavior of the U.S. personnel involved and the president’s resolve to bring the offending individuals to justice. While the president’s willingness to stand up and be counted may be laudable in our eyes, his gesture to the Arab world will serve only to deepen the humiliation of his government and our country in this regrettable affair.

The only thing the Arab world and the international community as a whole will understand would be the immediate resignation of the secretary of defense and his subordinates responsible for oversight of the interrogation of the Iraqi detainees. The secretary’s resignation is our best hope for limiting the damage of this incident, and moderating the inevitable effects of a distracting and counterproductive high-profile congressional investigation.

When the smoke clears, our lawmakers should consider the place in our society of “tactical interrogation” or, yes, “torture.” It is a very painful subject but one which is increasingly relevant and on which we should not continue to hide our heads in the sand. In his recent book, “Why Terrorism Works: Understanding the Threat, Responding to the Challenge,” Alan Dershowitz includes a chapter titled “Should the Ticking Bomb Terrorist Be Tortured?”

The author reminds us that “torture” by whatever name is undeniably present in our systems of law enforcement and intelligence collection. He helps us understand it is unfair to impose on our beleaguered law enforcement and intelligence officers the burden of deciding whether such forceful methods are justified for the acquisition of desperately needed information.

At the moment, we know that U.S. officials sometimes feel compelled, in the urgent public interest, to resort to “tactical interrogation” techniques. We know also that, in some cases, our intelligence agencies subcontract the work to counterparts in other countries where cultures may be more accepting of such practices. If we are going to tolerate under any circumstances the use of physical torture to achieve urgent public interest objectives, we need to be honest about it. The legislative and judicial branches of the government could create and maintain systems for the issuance of “torture warrants” in those rare cases where such extreme measures seem justified. In Dershowitz’s book, we learn that scholars have debated this idea over the years.

It would be understandable if legislators and judges were not prepared to bite the bullet. Should that be the case, the managers of our admirably “can do” law enforcement and intelligence agencies need immediately to remove for their subordinates all ambiguity regarding expectations they will employ all possible measures in the extraction of information in terrorism and other cases of impending disaster.

Robert Sargent is a former U.S. diplomat whose overseas assignments included Turkey and Tunisia. He resides in Sargentville.