Torture R Us

I've said it before, I'll say it again: torture, unless you're Jack Bauer, does not work. AJ at Americablog has a great post on this today.

Torture is a great technique for making people say what you want. Looking to convert people to your religion? Torture is a quick way to do it (or to at least have people declare their conversion, more specifically). Want to have citizens declare allegiance to your autocratic state? Again, torture is the way to go. Need a confession, and not too concerned whether or not it's true? Yea for torture! Torture frequently elicits lies, specifically lies designed to satisfy the torturer and therefore end the pain -- and believe me, people will say anything to end the kind of pain and terror that comes from torture, even as a result of methods that don't leave physical scars, such as waterboarding. The information that comes from torture is of such questionable reliability that it is often hard to take seriously, and there are great risks of being diverted from accurate information through chasing down fake leads from people who lie to escape the pain.