While the notion that torture works has been glorified in television shows and movies, the simple truth is this: torture has never been an effective interrogation method.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
We do not need torture as an available instrument of interrogation.
There's been a lot of experience with torture in history. It doesn't work.
Torture produces unreliable evidence and therefore doesn't achieve and protect anybody. Torture corrupts those who are doing the torturing.
Torture is illegal, both in the U.S. and abroad. So - and that is true for the Bush administration and for any other administration.
I strongly disapprove of torture and have never and would never provide assistance in its process.
America does not torture. We never have, and we never will.
'We don't torture' is the anguished cry of squishy people who have decided that trying to frighten terrorists by roughing them up is somehow the very definition of torture.
This is not to condone torture, which is still prohibited by the Torture Convention and federal criminal law.
If torture is going to be administered as a last resort in the ticking-bomb case, to save enormous numbers of lives, it ought to be done openly, with accountability, with approval by the president of the United States or by a Supreme Court justice.
There is still much debate about whether torture has been effective in eliciting information - the assumption being, apparently, that if it is effective, then it may be justified.