Gene Lyons on Torture

[mooseandsquirrel]

snip

If history teaches anything, it’s that “intelligence” agencies in authoritarian regimes like Egypt’s—also Stalin’s Russia and Pinochet’s Chile and, for that matter, the Spanish Inquisition—aren’t about compiling accurate information at all. They’re about securing phony confessions and telling Big Brother exactly what he wants to hear.

snip

http://moose-and-squirrel.com/gene/gene.html

[Dudley_DUright]

1. Gene is right that too many people are influenced on this question

by totally fictional scenarios like they might see on FOX's "24" or in the movies. In real life, torture is morally wrong AND does not work (as the Al-Libi situation makes all too clear).

[hadrons]

2. even the Nazis found torture as counter-productive in extracting info