The part that we don't talk about is that torture feels good, because it is by its very nature a sign of dominance. Everything about civil society is about suppressing the need for dominance. That is why we should never condone torture.

Would you rape someone's wife in order to get him to talk?

I suppose Alan would believe it's OK for a Palestinian to torture him in order to get him to stop his hateful rhetoric about them.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,489898,00.html

No big deal when an Arab totures another Arab, right? It's only really newsworthy when it's an infidel doing the torturing.

As geologists, i.e people well familiar with field life, maps, topography, etc. we were trained as artillery recon officers.
Artillery recon is a very serious and extremely dangerous activity demanding crossing the front lines into the enemy territory covertly, creating covert posts of observation on the enemy side, finding camouflaged targets and targets of utmost importance and later artillery fire correction.
That also includes taking prisoners and bringing them back for interrogation. But the interrogation would be done by "specialists" and not by us, so we could pretend that we have nothing to do with this.
It did sound disgusting to me and probably together with all other things that did disgust me about Soviet regime lead to my decision to leave the country (took me 10 years).

But once I remember a huge discussion between us, boys, that really, theoretically, torture is terrible and everything, but if the life of your buddies depend on it? Most of us by that time went through the 2 year draft service and were quite experienced soldiers and understood very well unit brotherhood…
When it was my turn to speak I said that if the lives of my detachment will be in danger, I will never hesitate to impose pain on a potential source. However, I will consider myself as a military criminal and will step down, report myself to the authorities or commit suicide if the punishment would not in my eyes restore my honor.

In my opinion torture can be very effective and will be used unfortunately as long as wars exist, but any attempt of LEGITIMIZATION of its use is beyond unhuman and that is why I consider Dershowitz to be among the most disgusting specimens of human trash ever.

Torture can in fact work if the torturer/interrogator has at least three people to interrogate and knows that all the people he is interrogating can answer the questions he is asking.

Even in that situation, the interrogator is out of luck if the subjects had a chance to prepare before hand or each subject gives a different answer to the questions.

Usually, torture is used to produce collaborators not to get useful information — at least this is the opinion that I usually heard from Palestinians, Zionist interlopers and pre-Neocon US state department officials.

If one wishes to obtain useful information, there are better ways to obtain it, and torture in fact impedes a good many other data gathering techniques.

What do you mean when you say torture "works?"

Have we stopped a potential terrorist attack through the use of torture? I doubt it. If we had, with or without torture, I am sure the Bushies would be trumpeting it. As is, their claims of breaking up potential attacks have all turned to dust on close examination.

Have we gotten a lot of useful information from torture? Well, it would be hard to imagine our policy failing MORE than it has already. So if we hadn't used torture would things be much worse?

Furthermore, I happened to watch the same interview. Gellman said that the broad consensus among professional interogators was that torture is counterproductive. The prevailing wisdom, according to Gellman, is to "turn" the captive's loyalty so he starts workng for you. You do this by coopting him, not torturing him. What you quoted Gellman saying was really an intellectual aside in which he posited that the tough question is: What if torture works? Do you use it? But that is academic. Fortunately, torture doesn't work so we don't have worry about that question.

The ticking bomb scenario is a puerile canard. It just doesn't happen in real life. And of course, the terrorist would know that he would just have to withstand the abuse for a short time before the bomb would explode. That is easier to take than open-ended torutre.

Instead of wasting our time on such gross stupidity, we should be thinking about how to adopt policies that do not mint more terrorists than we can possibly ever torture.

I agree that torture and brutality are endemic to war. That is why the Geneva Conventions and the Army's code of military conduct are so important. They are there to try to blunt our worst instincts. Shame on Bush, Rumsfeld and Cheney for undermining them.

"If torture doesn't work, then why have people done it since the dawn of time?"

I guess by that logic, there is something to the fact that blacks, women and gays are inferior and slavery must have some merit, too.

There are loads of stupid ideas that have been around since the dawn of man. I was under the impression that one of the points of Mondoweiss was to point more than a few of them out.

We used leeches to bleed people for many years. It must have worked! So many people used the method!

A lot of people use astrology! Therefore it must work!

When most of the people talk about "if torture works" the meaning of the word "works" is unclear. Works in what sense? Works always? Every time? In all circumstances?
The question should be asked:"Is excessive physical or psychological pressure can be instrumental to make people do things against their will and best judgment? The answer is – in most of the cases.
So, such pressure can be put to use for illegal purposes of extracting the information beyond legal means. The value of such information in different cases can be dramatically different.
The argument "if people used it for a long time it must work" is, as the astrology example shows, not very good.
However, another argument – "I know that my cowardly superiors, as well as cowardly public believe that torture works, so we should do it to the detainees so we are not accused of being sissies" – seem to be a real argument behind torture use.
Usually these people has no idea what a dedicated person who lost his family, friends, whose livelihood is devastated and children have no future is capable of. They can put steel and rocks to shame.

And apart from the moral and ethical concerns, there is also the sociological question of why different cultures exhibit such different attitudes toward the practice–

http://www.ynetnews.com/Ext/Comp/ArticleLayout/CdaArticlePrintPreview/1,2506,L-3316939,00.html