I hate to say it, but I can think of a way in which you could probably get reliable information from prisoners through the use of torture.

Assuming that the interrogator has several pieces of sensitive information that the prisoners might think is secret, the interrogator could torture the prisoner until he tells you some of that information that you already know. Use your ability to get at that information as a measure of whether or not the person has been "broken" and is telling you reliable info.

Use this same technique on other prisoners. Cross reference the information across a sample group of prisoners in order to get an idea of how reliable the information probably is.

Of course, this is probably the exact same approach interrogators use when not using torture. So, the question should be not only be "does torture work", but does it work any better?

Put these two clips together and it is clear that there is a very real sense in which torture 'works'. Dick Cheney wanted a connection between Saddam Hussein and it would appear that the use of torture got him that connection. Bob Baer said the Chinese tortured people to get false confessions and then said that 'that's not why we did it'. But it appears that may be exactly why we did it - and it worked.

Sure, torture works in some instances, but we never have those kinds of opportunities. Even if we did, we wouldn't realize it at the time. I could torture you to get your bank card PIN. I know that you know your PIN and I can easily verify the answer you give me under torture. The proverbial "ticking time bomb" that people talk about, you know, the retards who form their foreign policy ideas from watching 24, well that scenario is almost never what people working in intelligence deal with. As the man said, had the CIA one single instance of torture yielding this sort of “ticking time bomb" information you can bet your ass we would have heard all about it by now.

The really absurd thing about this whole issue is that our own military teaches that torture doesn’t work and that the information gained from torture is highly unreliable. That's what they taught me. I think that a lot of the torture was just some sort of sick punishment. How else can explain waterboarding someone over one hundred times? Perhaps even more absurd are the people saying that by releasing this information about torture tactics we are arming the terrorists

Those who are tortured will tell you ANYthing. It MIGHT be true, or have a grain of truth, or just what you want to hear. The record shows that torture is a terrible method of interrogation in terms of results, the effect on the victims and the perpetrators, and the effect on the respect for the country of the torturers.

The record also shows that being nice to prisoners reveals good intel. Being nice. Yes, you have to ask questions and keep track of what is said and make sure that it adds up and follow up on the information outside of the interrogation, but inside the interrogation you need to be nice.

This conversation has been held on this forum before, and I've posted links to the research and so on, AND there was a long list of essays against torture that was put out last year. It is not effective under any imaginable circumstances. As discussed in these 2 clips, torture also takes away resources from other investigative techniques and avenues.

The fact that those who came out against torture in the past have been, and those who are exposing this information today are being labeled "un-American" and accused of "arming the terrorists" is an outrage. If the higher-ups who knew better had raised a big enough stink back in 2001-02, maybe this discussion would be an easier one, and the Bush administration would have exposed for the immoral managers that they were. Instead we're having this argument now, when we have other fires to put out. I hope nothing gets lost in this melee.

You'd think, but then the neo-cons are busy dragging the GOP to absurdity. Not that the Republicans notice.

I thought Bob Baer on Bill Maher made it pretty clear torture doesn't work. (I don't think it was one of Bill Maher's best interviews but I think Baer carries a lot of authority.)