Reply #44: I think that's a valid point of view [View All]

The entire "debate" is designed to legitimate torture in less clear circumstances, and torture had not in fact been used to get valid information. I acknowledge that. It's fair to say that engaging in the debate will make torture possible in cases where it won't work, by focusing on extremely theoretical cases in which it might.

That said, I don't think it's factually correct to say torture never works in eliciting valid information.

In fact, as I wrote here, the torture memo that started this whole disgraceful episode, the memo that enabled harsh and deceitful interrogation techniques to be applied to Abu Zubaydah, actually elicited information that was considered the "Rosetta Stone of 9/11."

But once you give a government the power to torture, they will abuse it, and in Zubaydah's case, it seems the government didn't like the fact that the truthful information elicited from Zubaydah implicated the Saudis and Pakistanis in 9/11, so it seems they decided to torture him to get himm to spout wrong information.