It’s Sunday, when serious topics are discussed in this blog. If you wanted humor, come back tomorrow.
I know you love it when I admit I was wrong. So today I will tease you by admitting that I have moved from “pretty certain” to “doubtful” on one topic: the effectiveness of torture.
Today I don’t want to talk about the morality or the political implications of torture. I’m only addressing the question of whether it works better than conventional interrogation in some cases. If torture doesn’t work better than the alternatives – not ever – then you don’t need to address morality because torture doesn’t even pass the first filter.
My previous view was that torture probably works really well, at least in selective cases, based on the fact that it is so often the method of choice. All of those law enforcement professionals around the world couldn’t be wrong, could they? Plus I imagine that if someone attached electrodes to my scrotum, I’d be talking plenty compared to the “let’s be friends” interrogation method. So torture certainly passes the sniff test. And I apologize for mentioning my scrotum and the phrase “sniff test” in the same paragraph. It couldn’t be helped.
The media have trotted out expert after expert to say that regular non-torture interrogation is MORE effective than torture. I discounted those experts as selectively chosen by the liberal media. One thing that all of the experts seemed to have in common is that none of them had USED torture. So how would they know torture was worse than the alternative?
But much time has passed since this debate began. You’d think that the proponents of torture (cough, cough, Fox New, cough) would have produced one credible torturer to say, “Torture works great! I get all of my information in minutes and I’m home to help the kids with homework by five!”
Or perhaps the media could find one torture victim who would say, “I wasn’t going to tell them anything until they started water-boarding me. Man, that stuff works!”
Now granted, it might be hard to find someone to confess to being a torturer. And it might be even harder to find someone who was tortured who is willing to endorse it. But it seems to me that with all the torturing going on, you could at least find a friend of a friend who saw it work. Or the American government could find some CIA operative who is willing to be filmed in silhouette with his voice garbled saying he’s seen torture produces excellent results.
But nothing? For years?
Move me to the skeptical column. The burden is on the proponents of torture to produce some proof that it works. I still don’t rule out the possibility that torture can be effective, but if it’s being done in my name, I want some fucking evidence.
(Note to prudes: I tried writing that last sentence without profanity. It just didn’t work.)