The Torture Myth

The Torture Myth (washingtonpost.com):

Or listen to Army Col. Stuart Herrington, a military intelligence specialist who conducted interrogations in Vietnam, Panama and Iraq during Desert Storm, and who was sent by the Pentagon in 2003 -- long before Abu Ghraib -- to assess interrogations in Iraq. Aside from its immorality and its illegality, says Herrington, torture is simply 'not a good way to get information.' In his experience, nine out of 10 people can be persuaded to talk with no 'stress methods' at all, let alone cruel and unusual ones. Asked whether that would be true of religiously motivated fanatics, he says that the 'batting average' might be lower: 'perhaps six out of ten.' And if you beat up the remaining four? 'They'll just tell you anything to get you to stop.'

This of course is a key factor in the question of whether or not we should torture people. I am certainly of the opinion that torture is useless as a method of obtaining confession, because a tortured person would indeed say anything to escape the torture. As to whether it would be useful for scenarios like 'where is the bomb' where the information could be independantly verified, this article obviously implies that it is still not a useful method, although other information that I have seen contradicts that assertion. Obviously this is not something that is easy to research and the answer any expert will give is likely to be clouded by personnal bias and opinion. A seperate issue is 'even if it does work, is it worth the costs?' I certainly have seen some very good arguements that it isn't, or at least isn't in almost all situations. Additionally, the very definition of torture is obviously subjective which further clouds this issue.