Reply #53: Your premises are all wrong then

[HamdenRice]

Just upthread, I said it could work. I never claimed it never works. Here are my exact words in post 44:

That said, I don't think it's factually correct to say torture never works in eliciting valid information.

In fact, as I wrote here, the torture memo that started this whole disgraceful episode, the memo that enabled harsh and deceitful interrogation techniques to be applied to Abu Zubaydah, actually elicited information that was considered the "Rosetta Stone of 9/11."

Where on earth did you get the idea I was saying it doesn't work but it's use could be justified? So your first premise is exactly wrong.

Your second premise is also wrong. It is possible to tell if it saved lives. The Clinton administration, for example, foiled the millenium bomb plot without torture. It's pretty obvious that if someone had blown up a bomb in Times Square on New Years Eve, many lives would have been lost. The administration bragged that they saved many lives. If we can tell that an operation that doesn't use torture saved lives, why couldn't we tell that an operation that did use torture saved lives?

If the feds had tortured 20th hijacker Zacarias Mousaoui into providing the names and flight numbers of the 9/11 hijackers and we then learned that they had planned to fly planes into the twin towers, we could know that lives were saved.

Your third premise is also wrong. Governments prosecute government officials for torture and abuse all the time -- especially police departments and prison officials. When the torture of detainees and prisoners isn't prosecuted, the crime is transformed from an individual crime to a state sponsored human rights abuse.