The compelling argument against torture is that it's ineffective, not that it's evil. Oh, sure it's evil. Sure, it violates the Geneva convention. But I'm going to argue that those are pretty irrelevant things today.
Three years ago I would have said, "it's evil, it's inhumane, and it violates our treaty obligations as much as our values" was enough of an argument to not engage in torture. Those are, in fact, the arguments everybody made against torture a few years back. And those arguments failed. They didn't just fail within the Bush administration--I wouldn't expect them to be persuaded on the issue. But they also failed to move the Republican party in Congress and a good embarassing chunk of the Democrats there, too.
Worse yet, the argument that our country was doing evil, the photographs of Abu Ghraib, the horrific reports from Guantanamo, the revelations of
secret CIA prisons in Eastern Europe and the Afghan "Salt Pit" and the common use of extraordinary rendition to countries less squeamish about torture all failed to move the American people to demand of their top civil servants that we stop using torture. Leading churchmen of this country stood up and said we needed to torture. Jesus's suggestion that we love our enemies as our brothers is obviously quaint and outmoded in their eyes. Republican presidential candidates said they were "looking for Jack Bauer" and that they didn't want these criminals to have access to, God forbid, lawyers. Even some Democrats would only speak against torture while leaving some carefully worded wiggle room. The rule of law in this country is apparently as quaint and anachronistic as Jesus.
Even anecdotes about several
perfectly innocent people being arrested and tortured failed to elicit much public outrage--outrage that should have been universal and deafening. The defense is "better safe than sorry" or "hey, these things happen in war" or "you gotta look at the big picture." I guess that's true since the people, who are the source of national sovereignty, don't seem to sweat the particulars here. But no one's really listening to the arguments on either side. The winning argument in most cases isn't "torture is wrong"
or "torture is necessary." The winning argument is "Ho-hum, what's on TV tonight?"
So I say with great confidence that the compelling argument against using torture is that it produces bad intelligence and ultimately re-directs vital security resources away to the resulting wild goose chases.
Apparently "we can't stand up for what's right while doing what's wrong" doesn't fly, since doing evil things is no longer against the American character. Dieticians tell us we are what we eat. Apparently the equivalent principle in politics is that you turn into who you vote for.