One more time: Torture doesn't work

Waterboarding Doesn’t Work, Scientists Say
By Brandon Keim September 21, 2009 | 12:07 pm |



Severe interrogation techniques like waterboarding, sleep deprivation, stress positions and the exploitation of phobias aren’t just morally reprehensible, they’re based on bad science, destroying the very memories they’re supposed to recover.

“There is a vast literature on the effects of extreme stress on motivation, mood and memory, using both animals and humans,” writes Shane O’Mara, a stress researcher at Ireland’s Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience. “These techniques cause severe, repeated and prolonged stress, which compromises brain tissue supporting memory and executive function.”

So-called “enhanced interrogation” was used on suspected terrorists during the Bush administration, and sparked a bitter argument over the nature of torture and its use by the United States. Enhanced interrogation was officially banned by President Obama, but almost certainly continues as part of Obama’s ongoing rendition program, which sends suspects to torture-practicing countries.

Some intelligence officials, from former Vice President Dick Cheney to current intelligence chief Dennis Blair, defend enhanced interrogation as an useful tool in pulling information from terrorists who refuse to talk. But many intelligence officers say that such information has little value, because people being tortured will say anything to make it stop.

A report published by the Intelligence Science Board in 2007 found that no research existed to support the use of enhanced interrogation. And O’Mara’s review, published Monday in Trends in Cognitive Science, describes a wealth of science that supports ending the practice.

more:

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/09/badintelligence/

(emphasis mine)

.... as practiced by our intelligence agencies and LE is nothing more or less than sadistic revenge perpetrated against marginal figures.

and emphasized that not only does torture not give good results, it gives incedibly bad results-- memory is easily altered by stress.

He discussed other, far more effective, means of interrogation.

All this is well known to anyone in the field, and has been for some time, but he claimed the CIA rebuffed any input from psychologists and other experts in interrogation.

But if you're looking to honor the God of Redemptive Violence, indulge the sadistic tendencies of a bunch of cowards, and satisfy the bloodlust that's been whipped up in the populace, then it's wonderfully efficacious. Is that so wrong?

Answer: Yes. It's a crime against humanity. And we paid for it.

:eyes:

It works to propagates lies, lies of torturer become lies of the tortured, and become lies of the enabling governance that abides torture.

It works to destroy the truth, the good truth, the embarrassing truth, the truth that sets US free and keeps US free.

More on how?

It takes one of the strongest powers we know. The power of many people and destroys integrity of the individual for just a small moment of capitulation. The truth has not changed. Only the individual's expression is broken, and only for those moments.

It breaks the goodness that binds mankind -- for that man/woman/child it creates an unhealed chasm between themselves and the goodness of family, friends, countrymen, and world. And, it breaks that goodness, that trust, for others that know of it.

It also breaks the torturer, whose hold on truth loses permanence, only henceforth existing for moments.

It lastly breaks the outside world who learn that truth does not matter. That speaking the correct words matter, that meaning does not matter, that all that matters is moments of time speaking what is expedient.

And, once we all learn that we have no trust in each other, we lose everything that relates to each other. Because the only thing we have is trust. Without trust, we have nothing.

We can live in a great land, powerful and wonderful and have nothing.

That's one way it works.