Why It Doesn't Work

Thanks to Atrios for this story. Here's why torture doesn't work--which any sane person will tell you--you just don't get good information. So you don't need some squishy moral reason for objecting to torture, or a cynical if-we-do-it-to-them-they'll-do-it-to-us complaint, or even a silly legal "it's against our own goddamn laws" position--from a practical, information-gathering perspective, it just doesn't work.

Any half-assed study of the Inquisition will tell you that. With the application of enough physical pain or mental anguish (not all of the Inquisition's methods were intended to break the body), a person will betray everyone he has ever known, and hundreds of those he never met. Even the bad ass warrior-monks known as the Knights Templar spilled the beans under Inquisition torture following their en masse arrests in the early fourteenth century. For more recent confirmation of the same truth, see a series of articles in Salon by Darius Rejali on torture, among other places, in Iran (under the Shah) and in Algeria (by the French), as well as a more general rundown of the methods used by the CIA and military intel types in Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib.

Anyway, here's the article to which Atrios so graciously has directed us: Newsweek's Iraq And Al-Qaeda.

A captured Qaeda commander who was a principal source for Bush administration claims that Osama bin Laden collaborated with Saddam Hussein's regime has changed his story, setting back White House efforts to shore up the credibility of its original case for the invasion of Iraq. The apparent recantation of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, a onetime member of bin Laden's inner circle, has never been publicly acknowledged. But U.S. intelligence officials tell NEWSWEEK that al-Libi was a crucial source for one of the more dramatic assertions made by President George W. Bush and his top aides: that Iraq had provided training in "poisons and deadly gases" for Al Qaeda. Al-Libi, who once ran one of bin Laden's biggest training camps, was captured in Pakistan in November 2001 and soon began talking to CIA interrogators. Although he never mentioned his name, Secretary of State Colin Powell prominently referred to al-Libi's claims in his February 2003 speech to the United Nations; he recounted how a "senior terrorist operative" said Qaeda leaders were frustrated by their inability to make chemical or biological agents in Afghanistan and turned for help to Iraq. Continuing to rely on al-Libi's version, Powell then told how a bin Laden operative seeking help in acquiring poisons and gases had forged a "successful" relationship with Iraqi officials in the late 1990s and that, as recently as December 2000, Iraq had offered "chemical or biological weapons training for two Al Qaeda associates."

But more recently, sources said, U.S. interrogators went back to al-Libi with new evidence from other detainees that cast doubt on his claims. Al-Libi "subsequently recounted a different story," said one U.S. official. "It's not clear which version is correct. We are still sorting this out." Some officials now suspect that al-Libi, facing aggressive interrogation techniques, had previously said what U.S. officials wanted to hear.

Well no shit. Oh, yeah--emphasis added.