On Torture

One quick question: Has anyone thought to talk to Japanese WWII survivors who participated in torturing prisoners or to North Vietnamese who tortured American prisoners to ask them whether the torture ever actually produced any good, useful information?

Just a thought.

Otherwise, reason and common sense dictate that if you use torture as an information-gathering mechanism you are wasting your effort. As I have stated here before, if you torture someone till he is ready to confess to the Crucifixion, how reliable is that information?

Obviously it wasn't reliable enough to keep us from stepping into the mess in Iraq.