Torture works?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-l-lewis/cheney-the-cia-and-tortur_b_206567.html

Cheney, the CIA and Torture: Asking the Wrong Questions

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Former Vice President Cheney has masterfully shifted the debate about torture from the realm of law and ethics to that of pure efficacy. Liberal columnist Richard Cohen "has to wonder if what he is saying now is the truth -- i.e., torture works." The famously secretive Cheney is now clamoring for the release of CIA memos that he contends shows that torture led to disclosures that he is "absolutely convinced... saved thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of lives." And so the Washington press pack heads off in hot pursuit of the elusive memos from the CIA, which will no doubt surface eventually.

It would not be surprising that, "having taken the gloves off" seven years ago, the CIA would have a memo in its files claiming that what it was doing actually worked. Washington is famous for bureaucrats larding the file with memos to superiors lauding the effectiveness of pet projects. Would the famously obliging George Tenet really have sent a memo to the eager Vice President telling him that after waterboarding two detainees 266 times -- including waterboarding Abu Zubaydeh 83 times in one month alone -- that waterboarding was totally useless? Abu Zubaydeh's original interrogators maintain that all of the useful information obtained came through traditional rapport building measures and that the information flow stopped once waterboarding started. No doubt, there is a counter-bureaucratic narrative. Cheney wants to take what is a stark legal and moral issue and turn it into yet another Washington "some argue this; some argue that" controversy. It is a clever bureaucratic maneuver, but it fundamentally distracts from serious debate about torture.

Let us assume that sometimes torture sometimes is effective. Let us also ignore the question of whether it is more effective than other techniques. Virtually all of the empirical evidence shows that torture is usually ineffective and is almost invariably less effective than other methods of interrogation. Also, tortured confessions frequently generate massive amounts of false information, leading to endless and costly false leads, and in turn, to a round robin of further interrogations of those wrongly identified.

But it is wrong to engage in the discussion whether torture is effective policy. The absolute prohibition on torture is not based on a consensus that it never works. Rather, it is based on the sad realization that the impulse to torture is ever-present; that human beings who are frightened or zealous or full of rage -- as human beings invariably are -- will feel a powerful need to torture and a powerful justification for acting on that need. It is useful to recall the understandable fear and anger after September 11 not to justify or excuse torture, but to understand that it is precisely at the moment of most stress that the norm against torture must be powerfully affirmed.

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is effective policy, and he insists that only he, with his special knowledge of ginned up intelligence, can answer it. He says that torture works to get information. But to examine the impact of torture on the recruitment of new terrorists is to "blame America." WRONG. It is to blame Cheney and his un-American cronies.

all kinds of bad shit may "work" if by that one means accomplishing your goal-


but at what cost?

cheney's narcisistic, assholery is disgusting, the fact that some people rally behind him is even more disgusting.


"Any means to an end" is the mo of the sort of people we should all want NOT to be(come).


:shrug: