Pelosi vs. the CIA--Who's really lying?

[theCryptofishist]

If I was tortured, I would tell them anything they wanted to hear, I could be very creative and detailed.

Lots of information and effort above. You sound like you have some kind of personal investment in torture, you sure go to a lot of work defending it and its effectiveness.

I do. After seeing what its done to family member I feel the need to "correct" folks like you when they feign ignorance of the world we live in and how our standard of living is obtained.

Hey no biggie.. its just the internet. I'm sure the VA will do a bang up job with my cousin after he comes home and no longer has to torture people in other countries so Obama can try to save the economy with more war. Hopefully he won't be too fucked up, my uncle never did get his shit together after Vietnam. But hey.. its their fault right. They should have refused the orders and wound up a casaulty in an "accident" somewhere.

Absolutely it is foul how our standard of living is obtained. Absolutely what happened to your uncle, and is happening to your cousin is atrocious.
FWIW, I believe that the way out of those being such common experiences is to stop using torture. We are the biggest kid on the block and when we bully the others their behavior detoriates as well. I agree that we will never rid the world of it, but brutality is contagious. The more people, and nations, that stand up and say that they will not, under any circumstances, torture the rarer it becomes. Really. I don't think I'm going to change your mind. And that breaks my heart. It also breaks my heart that 4000+ people are not coming back from the one war, and I don't even know the death toll from the other one. And things look like they're getting worse in the region. We squandered the moral authority we had in the world, and that means a long slog in the mud.

And the VA sucks in so many ways.

[dr.placebo]

I agree with everything you said EXCEPT the part about being able to demonstrate ineffectiveness. I thought the Spanish Inquisition showed that it was really effective.

I'm not an expert on either giving or receiving torture. My opinion is based on those in the intelligence community who have come forward and testified on the subject.

Torture is certainly effective at extracting what the victim thinks the torturers want to hear. False confessions, false accusations, and, of course, screams and pleading can be produced in great abundance.

Torture probably does have some effectiveness when the information can be immediately tested (PIN codes, for example) and the consequences are immediately obvious. But this is not why the suspects under US control were tortured.

There is increasing evidence that torture was used in preference to more conventional and effective means advocated by professional interrogators from the CIA and FBI. The truly damning part of this is that the US had a policy of using torture not as a last resort, but as a first resort.

[Apollonaris Zeus]

Who really cares?

both of them didn't know it was illegal anyway

[dragonfly Jafe]

...I bet the truth would come out with a little water-boarding...

[Oldguy]

What did they not know and when did they not know it?