Waterboarding Rocks!

[Prometheus]

I think you are wrong to try to equate torture during interrogation to soldiers killing during war.

You are entitled to your opinion. I doubt anything I say or show you can convince you that we are engaged in a very real, and potentially very deadly war, with a totally ruthless opponent. So I won't bother trying. But I wonder ... does Obama think we aren't at war? If not, do you feel safer folks?

Actually, it would be quite easy. All you have to do is redefine the word 'war' to mean something completely different than it ever has before. To be precise, you are committing a logical fallacy known as "Low Redefinition". It's too bad that so many on the right fall for this one, too, as your arguments would have a great deal more weight if you'd just cut it out.

And I don't believe your claim that there are people who would do nothing in the same situation out of fear of prosecution

Well I'm not going to try and convince you. I think you don't know human nature as well as you think.

In other words, you have no evidence in support of your claim. Got it. Again, this is too bad. Perhaps you're right and I am wrong, but to assume so without evidence is committing another logical fallacy, a form of Argument From Incredulity.

but even if they do exist that's still irrelevant

So the motivation our laws give to our *soldiers* in war is irrelevant. I'm not sure many generals would agree with you.

Since the exchange in question was talking about professional interrogators and not soldiers, yes, the motivation our laws give to soldiers is, in fact, irrelevant to the question at hand. This is a Strawman Fallacy.

as I expect that such people would never be offered a job interrogating high-value terror suspects.

There are bureaucrats in all lines of work. Just look at the FBI. Even the CIA is full of people just looking to draw their pension, looking to not rock the boat. There are even a great number of people who are rule followers and would obey the law regardless of the consequences. You really are in denial concerning reality.

Perhaps you misunderstood my objection, so I'll give you the benefit of the doubt on this one. You presented a False Dichotomy (yet another logical fallacy), suggesting that given the choice to either torture or *do nothing*, some people would choose to do nothing solely out of fear of prosecution. Ignoring the fact that such a dichotomy can't exist in the first place, it's possible for people to choose to do nothing for some other reason than fear of prosecution, such as because they believe that's the morally correct course to follow. People who don't do things that they believe are right only because they fear prosecution are, in my experience, exceedingly rare--but I don't hang out with a lot of far-right-wingers, so maybe you know something I don't.

As to your quip about my being in denial, I'll thank you in advance not to make such personal attacks in the future. They are unwarranted, and they detract from the quality of your arguments, such as they are.

The fact is, I would be acting neither rationally, nor morally. I would be acting solely from emotion.

Ah yes ... another liberal completely controlled by emotion.

It's actually rather rare to find someone actually commiting a genuine Ad Hominem, as it really is one of the dumbest errors in reasoning possible. To be fair, though, it's unclear exactly what your intention is in the above statement, so perhaps I'll give you the benefit of the doubt again and assume that yours is just an emotional outburst rather than a truly poor debate tactic.

The main difference is that in the interrogation scenario, I have absolutely no way of knowing whether or not my victim actually does have information that will allow me to save lives--and that can be extracted via torture--until after I've committed torture.

That's not true. I'm not suggesting torture in situations where you don't have good reason to suspect your *victim* (that wording says a lot about you, by the way) is involved in a very serious plot and has vital information that might allow you to stop it.

I think perhaps you meant to say "do" in place of the bolded "don't", otherwise you'd have me torturing every innocent person I came across.

You don't like the word "victim"? Which term would you use to define the relationship between torturer and tortured, "reluctant masochist" perhaps?

Regardless, you still don't know whether or not torture will extract that vital information until after you've committed torture--unless you're psychic, in which case you wouldn't need to torture, would you? And even if your rather weird and incredibly unlikely hypothetical should somehow occur, all that suggests is that there's a potential exception to a proven valid rule--certainly not a reasonable basis for changing the law.

Battle is a very different animal.

This is a battle in a new type of war. Seems liberals are going to insist on only fighting the last war. A sure way to lose this one, by the way.

I voted for Bush in 2000 (horrible mistake, I admit) and his father before him. Not sure how that makes me a liberal. Regardless, this is the same Low Redefinition fallacy that I pointed out above, and your statement is logically incoherent, to boot. If it really is a "new type of war" then how on Earth would you know what "a sure way to lose" is? If you've somehow got the necessary experience to argue this position from competence, then it can't be something new.

And even in war, soldiers are not allowed to torture their prisoners.

And why does the other side in this war not respect that rule? Could it again be that you are using rules that don't fit the current circumstances?

...or perhaps it's because they're Un-American. Is that what you aspire to be?

 

[Lonewulf]

And why does the other side in this war not respect that rule? Could it again be that you are using rules that don't fit the current circumstances?

It always amazes me how much pride some people take into sinking to the level of the enemy they hate the most.

 

[MattusMaximus]

I was listening to a story on NPR on the way home from work this afternoon on this very topic, and it is interesting to note that the FBI interrogators involved with the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah are contradicting the claims by various Bush administration officials about the effectiveness of torture in that case...

FBI: Key Sept. 11 Leads Obtained Without Torture

... one of Zubaydah's FBI interrogators, Ali Soufan, remembers it differently. Soufan wrote in The New York Times that Zubaydah talked without being coerced.

Two high-ranking former FBI sources remember it that way, too. They say that intelligence breakthroughs came before Zubaydah was subjected to harsh techniques, not after. Another person close to the interrogation, Rohan Gunaratna, has similar recollections. He is an al-Qaida expert who has worked with U.S. government agencies on terrorism issues. ...

... Gunaratna and FBI agents familiar with the Zubaydah case say he was shot and near death when he was captured. FBI agents, including Soufan, tended to Zubaydah during his convalescence. The idea was partly to bond with him.

When he was well enough, the agents began showing Zubaydah pictures of suspected members of al-Qaida. When he saw a photograph of Khalid Sheik Mohammed, Zubaydah apparently asked, "How do you know about Muktar?"

"We know all about Muktar," the agent said, without missing a beat. He flipped through several other photos and then went back to the picture of Mohammed.

Zubaydah looked up and added, "How did you know he was the mastermind of 9/11?"

Gunaratna says that was a critical revelation — and there were others. "In fact, most of the information that was exceptionally useful to the fight against al-Qaida came from Abu Zubaydah," he says, "and it came before the U.S. government decided to use enhanced techniques." ...

... There is a second important claim: That harsh interrogation tactics also led to the arrest of American Jose Padilla. Gunaratna was the government's expert in the Padilla case. He said they got the key lead on Padilla from Zubaydah without using torture.

Zubaydah apparently told the FBI about a Puerto Rican kid — in Jordan — who had instructions from Khalid Sheik Mohammed to get a clean passport and head back to the U.S.

The FBI asked the U.S. Embassy in Jordan to look for a young man of Hispanic descent who had tried to get a new passport. Padilla's name popped up. The FBI got his picture, showed it to Zubaydah and said, "Is this the guy?" Zubaydah nodded.

The authorities picked up Padilla when he got to Chicago.

Matthew Alexander was a military interrogator in Iraq. He thinks that the FBI's techniques work and says the results of the CIA techniques speak for themselves.

"The fact that [the CIA] waterboarded Khalid Sheik Mohammed 183 times and he never lead them to Osama bin Laden is a glaring failure," he said. ...

Note to Hayden and the other Bushies who are now suddenly going on and on about the "amazing success" of the torture they approved...

 

[MattusMaximus]

It always amazes me how much pride some people take into sinking to the level of the enemy they hate the most.

I also have to wonder how many of these defenders of torture (that's you, BAC) would be willing to have the techniques applied to themselves?

After all, when police learn about mace & tazers, they get to experience the effects first hand...

 

[Cicero]

I also have to wonder how many of these defenders of torture (that's you, BAC) would be willing to have the techniques applied to themselves?

After all, when police learn about mace & tazers, they get to experience the effects first hand...

Some consider the use of tazers torture as well. But American elite forces groups are subjected to waterboarding during their training.

 

[leftysergeant]

When you have to invoke the saving of billions of lives to justify an action, then that's kind of a big clue that it is not, under any normal circumstances, justifiable.

This is, of course, in addition to the fact that there is close to zero percent chance of such a condition arising that you would even know of or have someone specificly in hand to torture who could give you immediately actionable intelligence to prevent the tragedy.

Aint ever gonna happen.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

Some consider the use of tazers torture as well. But American elite forces groups are subjected to waterboarding during their training.

I would certainly consider the use of tazers to be torture if it were used in the context of the definition of torture. That is, if you're a government agent of some sort, and you've got someone already in your custody, and you tazered him during an interrogation, that would certainly be the intentional infliction of severe pain to extract information.

I don't think that's what law enforcement uses tazers for, though. I think it's seen as a non-lethal way of subduing someone who is NOT in your custody and is resisting attempts to take him into custody.

You could say the exact same thing about clubbing someone with a night stick (or billy club). If the guy's already in your custody, and you're trying to get a confession, you certainly can't start clubbing him. If you're trying to arrest a suspect, and he's fighting back, you can club him as is appropriate in order to get him into custody. (There are also allowances for the club and the tazer when it's a commensurate level of force being used against someone threatening someone. Though I think that's a fine distinction, because you'd normally want to arrest someone doing that anyway, but I suppose you don't have to.)

 

[MattusMaximus]

Interesting bit of news out today on this subject. It seems that even within the Bush administration at the time, there was a lot of resistance to the use of torture...

Inside accounts of interrogation approval differ

Release of Bush-era documents that shed more light on the origins of the CIA's use of harsh interrogation tactics has ignited a backstage battle between former Bush officials over a crucial May 2002 meeting that paved the way for use of waterboarding on a suspected al-Qaida leader.

The fracas over who was responsible for authorizing use of the simulated drowning tactic and other harsh techniques on captured suspect Abu Zubayda is raising new questions about that 2002 decision and follow-up moves that allowed the CIA to use the now-banned techniques.

Some former Bush officials argue that they were not properly warned by CIA officials about the potential perils of the severe methods, while others insist there were explicit cautions. ...

... But in a separate attachment, the training officials told Pentagon lawyers that harsh physical techniques could backfire by making prisoners more resistant. They also said that if the use physical methods on prisoners were discovered, the public and political backlash would be "intolerable."

The attachments were included in the Senate Armed Services Committee's release of documents and in a fuller copy obtained Saturday by the AP.

They also warned that harsh techniques cast into doubt the reliability of the information gleaned during the interrogation.

"A subject in extreme pain may provide an answer, any answer or many answers in order to get the pain to stop," the training officials said in their memo.

Ah, the plot thickens.

 

[MattusMaximus]

Some consider the use of tazers torture as well. But American elite forces groups are subjected to waterboarding during their training.

I'm not talking about that... I'm talking about those who are on this thread advocating for these techniques. Do they have the huevos to have it done to them first, if they really believe it isn't that bad?

 

[Texas]

Which explains why KSM said he was only waterboarded 5 times?

Clifford May just confirmed it. There are lies and then there are damned lies and the left is spewing more damned lies over this than I have ever seen.

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NTJjNjg1OThmOTVlMWVmYTZiM2Q5ZGU5NzdjY2E0ODQ=

A Corner exclusive: How many times have you read and heard in the mainstream media that terrorists were waterboarded more than 180 times?

It turns out that’s not true. What is?



According to two sources, both of them very well-informed and reliable (but preferring to remain anonymous), the 180-plus times refers not to sessions of waterboarding, but to “pours” — that is, to instances of water being poured on the subject.



Under a strict set of rules, every pour of water had to be counted — and the number of pours was limited.



Also: Waterboarding interrogation sessions were permitted on no more than five days within any 30-day period.



No more than two sessions were permitted in any 24-hour period.



A session could last no longer than two hours.



There could be at most six pours of water lasting ten seconds or longer — and never longer than 40 seconds — during any individual session.



Water could be poured on a subject for a combined total of no more than 12 minutes during any 24 hour period.

 

[Nova Land]

Back on page 4, BAC posed a hypothetical. Essentially, it was this (my paraphrase):

suppose there's a terrorist action being planned, we have in custody a captive who we are certain has information which would enable us to stop the action and save a large number of lives, and there are only a few hours left until the action will occur. Do you use conventional interrogation methods to obtain information which can prevent the action, or do you attempt to torture the information out of the captive?​

On page 10 I added a second hypothetical:

Suppose there's a terrorist action being planned, we have in custody a captive who we are certain has information which would enable us to stop the action (and save a large number of lives), and there is a month or more before the action will occur. Do you use conventional interrogation methods to obtain information which can prevent the action, or do you attempt to torture the information out of the captive?​

My answer for the second hypothetical is that we should use conventional methods, as these methods have a good track record of success while torture does not; hence, using conventional methods increases the chances of saving lives while using torture diminishes them.

BAC chose to disagree with some of my statements, starting with my assertion that while the second hypothetical is a fairly reasonable one the original hypothetical is not:

The former hypothetical is extremely rare.

Perhaps. Note that such a situation could easily have arisen just before the 9/11 attack with just a minor tweaking of the facts.

"Easily"? Perhaps. But I note that it didn't. Nor did the particular scenario you dreamed up ever occur, so far as we know, in any other occasions in history when a terrorist action was being planned. In contrast we know of numerous times when there has been knowledge well in advance that something was in the works.

So my statement that the hypothetical I raised is significantly more likely than the hypothetical you raised seems to match reality. Your statement that your hypothetical could "easily" have occurred seems grounded more in fiction -- the only place to date where such scenarios have been known to happen.

In fact, I don't know of a single case in which this has actually come up.

That doesn't mean it couldn't come up and in fact you don't know all of the cases that exist, if for no other reason than that governments keep secrets.

This is true.

Likewise it is true that alien spacecraft may have crash-landed on earth and the remains may be stored in a military hangar. The fact we don't know of a single case in which this has happened doesn't mean it hasn't happened, especially since (as you point out) the government keeps secrets.

Similarly it's possible the 9-11 attack was actually a plot carried out by our own government, as some 9-11 conspiracy theorists suggest.

But until there is substantial evidence to indicate that aliens crash-landed in on earth -- or that the US government planned and carried out the 9-11 attack -- or that a ticking-time-bomb scenario such as you posit secretly occurred -- then there is no good reason to believe any of these things is true.

That's what skepticism is about -- believing in things for which there is good evidence, and lacking belief in things for which that evidence is lacking.

 

[Nova Land]

[M]y purpose was to demonstrate that... there are indeed situations where torture might be justified. In this I think I succeeded.

No. In order to demonstrate that torture might be justified in certain situations, you need to show that it will achieve a better outcome than not using torture would -- in this case, that the use of torture would result in significantly fewer casualties in a specific tailor-made scenario. Despite repeated claims on your part that this is so, you still have not presented the evidence to support that conclusion.

You have presented evidence which shows that torture is effective in breaking people. That's true, but trivial; I don't think anyone is disputing that. If you wish to reduce a person to a babbling blob, torture is effective. If you wish to get a person to say whatever you wish them to say, torture is effective. In Korea and Vietnam, for instance, torture was effective in getting US soldiers to say they had committed war crimes. In the lead-up to the Iraq War, torture was effective in getting captives to say there were links between Hussein and Al Qaida and that Iraq had significant stockpiles of WMD.

What you have not shown is that torture is effective in obtaining useful information which the questioner does not already possess. In the example which opens this thread, for instance, torture was able to obtain information from KSM about the LA library tower plot -- several months after the plot had already been foiled using information obtained through conventional interrogation methods.

If you can come up with examples in which, through the use of torture, interrogators were able to obtain useful information which led to the foiling of terrorist actions, that would be evidence in support of your point. When you have laid those examples out clearly, then we will be able to examine them and see if they stand up to scrutiny. So far the examples presented have failed to do so.

 

[Nova Land]

Please note the source I provided in an earlier post indicated that months of conventional interrogation was totally ineffective with regards to KSM and some of the other al-qaeda operatives who were captured.

No, that's not what your source said. But let's pretend for a minute that it is, in order to illustrate for you how skepticism works.

Let's suppose you had cited a source which claimed conventional interrogation was ineffective in this instance. Here's the thing: It's not enough simply to wave evidence around and assume this proves something. The evidence needs to stand up to scrutiny and to be weighed against the other available evidence.

In this thread, I and others have cited statements by people who were involved in the interrogation. In these statements, they assert that useful information was obtained through conventional methods.

The statements from the people who did the interrogations are detailed and credible; they specify what information they obtained and how it was used, and their accounts match the known facts.

For example, the LA Library Tower plot was indeed disrupted -- and since this happened prior to the use of torture, this supports the accounts of those who say the intelligence to do this was derived through conventional interrogation. So if your source had actually claimed the conventional interrogation was "totally ineffective", his statement would be at variance with the available evidence.

The statements attesting to the effectiveness of the conventional methods were cited and quoted several times in this thread; and yet, here we are on page 12 and you still seem to be completely ignoring them. That means you are dismissing statements which are in accordance with the facts, while accepting uncritically one which appears at variance with the facts. Could you explain what criteria you use in evaluating evidence which permits this peculiar result? The only criteria I can see which accomplishes this is the highly non-skeptical this source seems to support my claim so it's good, but these sources don't so I'll dismiss them.

A closer reading of your source may help you understand the situation better. Nowhere does your source say that the conventional methods were "totally ineffective" -- that's your incorrect paraphrase. Yes, torture was eventually used on Zubadayah -- in an attempt to get more information from Zubadayah than they had already obtained.

It is Kiriakou's opinion that the information obtained after Zubadayah was tortured "probably" was useful. He is not, however, able to provide any specific examples. "Probably" -- his word, not mine -- is the best he is able to muster in this statement.

In contrast -- as detailed in the sources you have chosen to ignore -- the conventional interrogators were able to cite specific information they obtained which actually was useful. That makes your claim, that conventional interrogation was "totally ineffective", an error on your part. The evidence shows that conventional interrogation was effective; it's torture for which the evidence of effectiveness is still lacking.

Yet according to the reports, they broke right away when some of the non-lethal *torture* methods, particularly waterboarding, were employed.

Yes. People break under torture. They will say what they think their torturers want to hear, in order to stop further torture. This is why torture is a good way for obtaining confessions regardless of the actual guilt or innocence of a suspect.

The question, though, is whether torture enables us to obtain useful information. If the aim is to obtain propaganda statements -- US soldiers, for instance, confessing to having committed war crimes in Korea and Vietnam, or Iraqis confessing to non-existent links with al Qaeda -- then yes, torture is useful. But if the aim is to obtain information which will help to foil terrorist activities, the evidence indicates that torture decreases our ability to obtain that information.

If you feel a case can be made that torture is an effective and reliable method for obtaining information, you need to lay out clearly the evidence to support this claim so that it can be examined and evaluated. This is something you still have not done.

 

[applecorped]

No. .

Yes.

 

[Nova Land]

Suppose there is not an incredibly-short time limit (necessitating the use of unconventional methods because it is felt conventional methods can't produce results quickly enough) as in the artificial hypothetical which has been constructed, but rather a more normal situation in which there is sufficient time for conventional methods to work. Are you willing to forbid the use of dubious techniques such as water-boarding and to let professional interrogators use the methods which over time have been found to be most effective and most reliable?

Sure.

Good! I am glad that is settled. While we still disagree on whether torture should be permitted under the (extremely unlikely) hypothetical you posed, we appear to be in agreement that torture should be banned whenever there is not a ticking time bomb.

But that does assume you already know the timeline the other side is operating under. It assumes you know that some attack is months off. That it's not going to occur tomorrow. But if you don't know when ... just that it is going to happen, and the consequences of the attack might be the deaths of tens or even hundreds of thousands of people, can we afford to always take the chance and act as if we do have months?

This was a hypothetical. In your hypothetical you specified that we knew the ticking-time-bomb would go off in hours; in mine I specified the ticking-time-bomb would not go off for at least a month.

You're right that in real life we generally don't know how exactly long we have. That's one reason your ticking-time-bomb scenario is unrealistic.

So let's set aside the world of artificial hypotheticals in which we know how long we have. It could be hours, could be days, could be months. In that case, it seems clear that the use of torture should always be ruled out.

Although there are many fictional examples in which a ticking-time-bomb is discovered an hour or less before it goes off, I do not know of any real-life examples. We can therefore assign an extremely low probability to that occurrence. Ditto for two hours, three hours, twenty-four hours. In contrast, a great many plots have been discovered which were weeks or months from fruition. So if we don't know how much time we have left, the odds favor assuming we have time for conventional methods to work.

Since conventional interrogation is more effective than torture at eliciting useful information which foils terrorist plots, and since the use of torture undermines the use of conventional methods and makes it less likely that we will be able to obtain the needed information, then using torture in any instance when there is time for conventional methods to work increases the risk of people dying. Your argument for employing a desperate hail-mary such as torture relied on setting up a situation in which we knew exactly how much time was left and that time was felt to be too short for conventional methods to work. If you are now abandoning that as unrealistic, and we are back to considering reasonable scenarios, there would appear to be no time when the use of torture is justified.

 

[Nova Land]

Yes.

If you disagree, please quote the text which supports your opinion.

I do not see the words "totally ineffective" anywhere in Kiriakou's statement. If I have overlooked these, I will post a and apologize for my carelessness.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

I don't think it's ever possible to know with certainty what someone does or doesn't know, or that you can't get that information any other way but through torture. Remember how the Unabomber case was broken? After his manifesto was published (against the objections of a great many who thought it would be playing into the hands of the terrorist), Ted Kazinski's brother recognized the rantings and turned him in.

Something like that could happen at any time. You can never know with certainty that some unidentified person won't come forward and volunteer the information you're looking for at any moment.

On top of that, the Bush administration proved itself completely untrustworthy with regard to intel. There's simply no way I'd want to give those guys the discretion to decide what they thought would be the certain result of torturing someone.

It also goes for the next really rotten president we get, or a possible future sadistic madman in some position of authority.

That's partly why torture cannot be justified in any case.

 

[Nova Land]

Back on page 10, Texas claimed that the figure of 183 was an extrapolation:

This is where the 183 times comes from and it is a dishonest interpretation.

http://s3.amazonaws.com/propublica/assets/missing_memos/28OLCmemofinalredact30May05.pdf

It takes times water was applied over a 5 day period with each application lasting 40 seconds or less and extrapolates that to a 30 day period.

ETA . Go to page 37.

The problem with that is that I checked the pdf which Texas cites as a source and I couldn't find anything on that page to back up Texas' claim. Therefore I posted:

What you cite does not appear to me to say what you claim it says.

I wish you had taken the time to quote the actual words from the pdf which you believe say the figure is an extrapolation. That would make it a lot easier for me to see if you have a valid claim or not. Since you did not do that, I have taken the time to type out the text for you so that you can point out where it says this...

I then typed out at length the text from the page so that Texas could identify the part which he believed said the figure was an extrapolation.

I note that Texas still has not identified any such passage. That supports my suspicion, mentioned in my previous post, that this is not something which the pdf says but rather is a speculation on Texas' part.

And now Texas cites Clifford May with an entirely different story. Apparently the 183 figure is not an extrapolation after all. It is the actual number of incidents -- but each time water is poured into a person's mouth (i.e. each time the person was water-boarded) is counted as water-boarding.

Geeze! That's like saying that if I take a gun and shoot six bullets into someone that I shot them six times rather than once.

Clifford May just confirmed it. There are lies and then there are damned lies...

Out of curiosity: do you consider your act of claiming that the 183 figure was an extrapolation, and citing the pdf as the source for this claim even though the pdf says no such thing, to be a lie or a damned lie?

 

[Lonewulf]

If you disagree, please quote the text which supports your opinion.

I do not see the words "totally ineffective" anywhere in Kiriakou's statement. If I have overlooked these, I will post a and apologize for my carelessness.

Good luck. I doubt you'll get anything out of that troll.

Unlike him, you actually value facts and good argument.

 

[Nova Land]

Getting back to BAC's ticking-time-bomb scenario:

... there are hundreds of unproven non-traditional methods from which to choose

Well you better get busy and prove them, if you want us to use them.

We seem to be in agreement that the effectiveness of non-traditional methods needs to be proven before we attempt to use them. That was exactly my point: before using non-traditional methods in critical matters, the actual utility of the non-traditional needs to be demonstrated. And at present there is no more evidence for the effectiveness of torture in obtaining the location of ticking time bombs than there is for the effectiveness of map-dowsers or psychic detectives in locating these things.

Torture has been demonstrated to be very effective at breaking people. If we already know what we want someone to say, then torture is a very effective way of getting them to say it. But if we don't already have that information, torture makes it harder to elicit the information. That's what people who are professionals at obtaining information have said, repeatedly. For instance, here is another quote from Stuart Herrington addressing this point:

Generations of professional interrogators have possessed such skills, and used them to obtain information vital to our country. Those who have not mastered these techniques fall back on the ultimate admission of incompetence and resort to brutality. Once this moral frontier is crossed, captives on the receiving end of such treatment respond to their survival instincts. Spurred by cunning and fueled by the hatred stoked by their tormentor's brutality, they respond as our American aviators responded in the Hanoi Hilton, showing their contempt by lying, invention, stalling -- anything to stop the abuse -- or by accepting death before dishonor.

It's possible that the interrogation experts who dismiss torture as ineffective are wrong; similarly, it's possible that skeptics who dismiss psychic detectives as ineffective are wrong. In both cases, it is up to those who advocate for the unconventional method to demonstrate its effectiveness.

The fact that there are practitioners of homeopathy who claim it is effective method of treating illnesses is not sufficient to demonstrate that it is. The fact that there are map-dowsers who claim map-dowsing is an effective way of locating missing items is not sufficient to demonstrate that it is. The fact that psychic detectives claim they have helped police locate missing bodies and items of evidence does not mean that are are actually able to do this. The fact that there are people who claim polygraphs can detect lies does not mean polygraphs actually can distinguish truth from falsehood. Similarly, the fact that there are people who claim that torture can elicit information that might enable the foiling of terrorist plots doesn't mean that it can. As skeptics, we ask that the evidence for homeopathy be laid out clearly so that it can be examined and evaluated. Ditto for claims that dowsing works, for claims that the polygraph works -- and for claims that torture works.

If your claim that torture is an effective method for obtaining useful information is true, then the evidence should bear this out. Please lay your evidence out clearly, so that we can examine and evaluate it.