# Does torture work? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [June 25, 2005, 4:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-torture-work/309770 "2005-06-25T04:37:39Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2005, 2:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-torture-work/309770/21 "2005-06-25T14:14:30Z")
Let’s suppose you want to gather informations about a secret military building on foreign soil. You’re going to use various methods. For instance, you coud pay a local official to tell you where it is situated. A spy could follow someone who could lead him to said building. You could send someone to take pictures of various suspicious buildings and anlyze the pictures. You could torture someone. None of this method is foolproof. The official could take the money and lie, the guy you’re spying upon may be actually going to a meeting of former college students, the suspicious building could be an ordinary factory, the tortured man could know nothing about it. None of the methods used is 100% foolproof. Actually, none is particularily more efficient than the others in itself. It depends on the circumstances. However any of them could work. If you’re only bothered about getting results, using all of them including torture and recouping the infos you’re gathering is the way to go. ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2005, 2:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-torture-work/309770/22 "2005-06-25T14:17:48Z")
IOW, it seems t me people are comparing torture used in a stupid way with other intelligence gathering methods used in an intelligent way. ---
**Author:** ![matt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a6a055/32.png) [@matt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/matt)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2005, 3:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-torture-work/309770/23 "2005-06-25T15:04:45Z")
> [@clairobscur](#): > > Why would them breaking “at the same time” be a requirment, by the way? Because you’re looking to correlate their answers. One guy breaks early and tells all, but the other is feeding you bullshit. So you keep on torturing the both of them, until the guy that has broken changes his story out of desperation. Eventually the guy that held out breaks, so now you have a correlation. Except maybe they had a pre-planned false story, since the second guy has switched stories since then… Don’t get me wrong, I agree that it _can_ work. But against a prepared, organised enemy, the countermeasures (work in isolated cells, use “need to know” information restrictions, have pre-prepared cover stories so that torture victims can appear to break when they haven’t making real breaks suspect, assume any captives are going to break eventually and move/alter anything pertaining to what they know etc.) make it ineffective and perhaps overall counterproductive. ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2005, 3:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-torture-work/309770/24 "2005-06-25T15:07:26Z")
Torture can work to gain information, but mainly if you use torture light. Heavy torture is usually used more to intimidate and control people. I think heavy torture only works to gain information when you use proper psychology with it, such as offering painkillers as a reward for telling the truth and offering worse torture for misleading answers, and/or threatening to use it on friends and family. In fact I remember reading in a modern police interrogation manual that most of the psychology tricks used by the police were invented by the inquisition interrogators of the 1300s, so they combined advanced psychology with heavy torture. So yeah it works if you ask me. Doesn’t mean anyone should ever use heavy torture, and even if people do use torture light it should be a last resort. Torture has endless ramifications aside from the obvious human rights issues. It can promote hatred and distrust for the regime that practices it thereby cutting off just as much human intelligence as it gathers because people don’t want to help an evil regime. Eventually it’ll lead to even more instability, terrorism and rebellion against the regime and it can demoralize everyone who finds out about it and politically isolate the nation that practices it. Theoretically at least. Torture was widespread in the US until about the 1940s. And probably just as widespread in other developed nations. ---
**Author:** ![JThunder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e95f7d/32.png) [@JThunder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JThunder)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2005, 4:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-torture-work/309770/25 "2005-06-25T16:53:54Z")
Torture seemed to work quite well for Jack Bauer. \<\\> ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2005, 6:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-torture-work/309770/26 "2005-06-25T18:12:06Z")
> [@Manish](#): > > That’s an interesting angle. Would the agencies in the modern world (or even pre-modern) have developed some standard techniques (psychological, for example) to drive the victim to the ‘truth point’, or is every victim usually considered as a standalone case, and the process starts from scratch? Some think they know when the victim breaks, but as some have said here- some agents are trained to resist torture, and they’ll break at a different time, and others are pathological liars, and others are great actors, and others… well you get the idea. The problem is- you don’t REALLY know when they are in which of the 3 stages. Waiting for a correlation will work IF- both victims really know the fact you’re after, _and_ (by pre-arranged or by accident) both don’t feed you the same false info at the same time. There are only a _very_ few cases where physical torture can be effective in getting information. And, even then, it’s dicey. ---
**Author:** ![Frankenstein\_Monster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ccd318/32.png) [@Frankenstein\_Monster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frankenstein_Monster)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2005, 8:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-torture-work/309770/27 "2005-06-25T20:52:02Z")
Google “does torture work?” and you’ll find accounts **by former torturers** who testify that torture doesn’t work. The information you get out of people by torturing them is rarely usable. [The Torture Myth](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A2302-2005Jan11.html) > [@](#): > > An up-to-date illustration of the colonel’s point appeared in recently released FBI documents from the naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. These show, among other things, that some military intelligence officers wanted to use harsher interrogation methods than the FBI did. As a result, complained one inspector, “every time the FBI established a rapport with a detainee, the military would step in and the detainee would stop being cooperative.” So much for the utility of torture. ---
**Author:** ![wevets](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e9a140/32.png) [@wevets](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wevets)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2005, 9:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-torture-work/309770/28 "2005-06-25T21:04:50Z")
> [@Little Nemo](#): > > But there are numerous methods to distinguish between real and fake information. Shalmanese pointed out one obvious one; have information you already know is true and use that to verify the truth of what the victims are saying. The torturer won’t ask “where are the guns?” - he’ll ask “what kind of supplies are there and where are they hidden?” If you’re interrogating someone, you’d expect to find information you already know and information you don’t know, wouldn’t you? So let’s say your hypothetical torturer asks about “what kind of supplies are there?” and keeps getting answers he doesn’t like. After applying more pain, he finally gets an answer he likes (“guns”), so he moves on to other questions. Was the answer given because the victim actually knew about the guns? We’ll never know because the torturer isn’t going to continue asking the question once he got the answer he “wanted.” Once he does answer that way, the torturer is going to be able to claim this guy is guilty because he was able to answer “guns.” Torture strikes me as a very effective way to indoctrinate victims in the story to which you already know some of the details. The remaining details can be filled in by the torturee, so knowing part of the story doesn’t really help you. > [@](#): > > Nine of the guys will be guessing things like a radio or money or explosives and also guess locations. The guy that says guns will be the one whose location is checked. Your hypothetical torturer is a very nice guy: he only asks the question once. 😉 > [@](#): > > Dictatorships are not necessarily stupid; they wouldn’t pay the political cost of torturing people for no reason. They’re willing to torture people despite the risk of domestic unrest and international censor because they have found it works. They’re not stupid; they’re willing to torture people because it can **reduce** the risk of domestic unrest. (In fact, I think that is a more important use of torture in dictatorships than as information gathering: think of all the examples of dictatorships torturing people who couldn’t give any useful information). It reminds me of a line in _Nightwatch_: “They torture people? Why doesn’t anyone stop them?” “'Cause they torture people.” In a democracy, having people cowed and intimidated by the government is a good way to make sure it doesn’t stay a democracy for very long… ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2005, 10:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-torture-work/309770/29 "2005-06-25T22:11:44Z")
Just reading through [The Torture Myth](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A2302-2005Jan11.html), posted by Frankenstein Monster from the Washington Post. I’m not sure this is saying what folks think its saying. > [@](#): > > By contrast, it is easy to find experienced U.S. officers who argue precisely the opposite. Meet, for example, retired Air Force Col. John Rothrock, who, as a young captain, headed a combat interrogation team in Vietnam. More than once he was faced with a ticking time-bomb scenario: a captured Vietcong guerrilla who knew of plans to kill Americans. What was done in such cases was “not nice,” he says. “But we did not physically abuse them.” Rothrock used psychology, the shock of capture and of the unexpected. Once, he let a prisoner see a wounded comrade die. Yet – as he remembers saying to the “desperate and honorable officers” who wanted him to move faster – “if I take a Bunsen burner to the guy’s genitals, he’s going to tell you just about anything,” which would be pointless. Rothrock, who is no squishy liberal, says that he doesn’t know “any professional intelligence officers of my generation who would think this is a good idea.” Seems to me Col. Rothrock is saying that physical torture is not very reliable…not that all torture does not work. > [@](#): > > Or listen to Army Col. Stuart Herrington, a military intelligence specialist who conducted interrogations in Vietnam, Panama and Iraq during Desert Storm, and who was sent by the Pentagon in 2003 – long before Abu Ghraib – to assess interrogations in Iraq. Aside from its immorality and its illegality, says Herrington, torture is simply “not a good way to get information.” In his experience, nine out of 10 people can be persuaded to talk with no “stress methods” at all, let alone cruel and unusual ones. Asked whether that would be true of religiously motivated fanatics, he says that the “batting average” might be lower: “perhaps six out of ten.” And if you beat up the remaining four? “They’ll just tell you anything to get you to stop.” And I’m not sure exactly what Col. Herrington is saying here. The implicatoin Im’ getting again though is he’s talking about physical abusive torture. Surely simply asking folks questions isn’t going to get answers, so I’m guessing there is something else in his process…something like drugs, sleep depravation, some kind of psychological stress…something. Its unclear exactly what he’s saying…and knowing how the interview process goes I’m guessing that much is left unsaid here. > [@](#): > > Worse, you’ll have the other side effects of torture. It “endangers our soldiers on the battlefield by encouraging reciprocity.” It does “damage to our country’s image” and undermines our credibility in Iraq. That, in the long run, outweighs any theoretical benefit. Herrington’s confidential Pentagon report, which he won’t discuss but which was leaked to The Post a month ago, goes farther. In that document, he warned that members of an elite military and CIA task force were abusing detainees in Iraq, that their activities could be “making gratuitous enemies” and that prisoner abuse “is counterproductive to the Coalition’s efforts to win the cooperation of the Iraqi citizenry.” Far from rescuing Americans, in other words, the use of “special methods” might help explain why the war is going so badly. I’m not sure how this shows torture works or doesn’t work…its kind of just saying that if we do torture people we can expect the insurgents to reciprocate. However, I’m unsure how valid that is…or to put it differently, if we didn’t torture anyone would some of the insurgents still cut off civilians heads or torture Iraqi’s to death as we saw in Fallujah. My guess…it wouldn’t make a bit of difference in most cases. Afaik the insurgents don’t seem to be all that interested in capturing American troops anyway…just in killing or maiming them. > [@](#): > > Given the overwhelmingly negative evidence, the really interesting question is not whether torture works but why so many people in our society want to believe that it works. At the moment, there is a myth in circulation, a fable that goes something like this: Radical terrorists will take advantage of our fussy legality, so we may have to suspend it to beat them. Radical terrorists mock our namby-pamby prisons, so we must make them tougher. Radical terrorists are nasty, so to defeat them we have to be nastier. I’m not seeing the ‘overwhelimingly negative evidence’ that torture doesn’t work…least not here. I’ll check out the other sites if I get a chance later. My final thought is…if torture really doesn’t work, why is its use so wide spread throughout the world? If it really doesn’t work, why do intelligence groups throughout the world train their people to resist it? Is it all just thousands of years of bullshit? I find that incredibly hard to believe, that its all sadism and bullshit without any effect at all. -XT ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2005, 10:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-torture-work/309770/30 "2005-06-25T22:51:48Z")
> [@wevets](#): > > If you’re interrogating someone, you’d expect to find information you already know and information you don’t know, wouldn’t you? So let’s say your hypothetical torturer asks about “what kind of supplies are there?” and keeps getting answers he doesn’t like. After applying more pain, he finally gets an answer he likes (“guns”), so he moves on to other questions. > … Why do you assume that the torturer would be stupid and would go on insisting until he would get an answer that would only mislead him? In the hypothetical you were presented with, the point of this question was precisely to know whether the suspect actually knew something. Besides, wouldn’t this equally apply to a regular interrogation? If the interrogator has already decided that the suspect is guilty and keep on interrogating him until he gets the answer he wants, and the suspect is actually not guilty, the interrogator is wasting his time. It seems to me that in this case, you’re precisely doing what I mentioned above : assuming that the interogator is going to use torture stupidely. While actually, not only he probably doesn’t, but he has much more knowledge about torture, its results, its limits, the possible behaviors of the victim, etc…that you could ever imagine. As already mentionned if it was so inneficient a method, why was it, why is it still so widely used? Even in a number of democracies… ---
**Author:** ![Fionn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/a587f6/32.png) [@Fionn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fionn)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2005, 10:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-torture-work/309770/31 "2005-06-25T22:54:01Z")
> [@xtisme](#): > > And I’m not sure exactly what Col. Herrington is saying here. The implicatoin Im’ getting again though is he’s talking about physical abusive torture. Surely simply asking folks questions isn’t going to get answers, so I’m guessing there is something else in his process…something like drugs, sleep depravation, some kind of psychological stress…something. Its unclear exactly what he’s saying…and knowing how the interview process goes I’m guessing that much is left unsaid here. > -XT I’m trying to dig up a cite for an article I read recently about one of the most effective American interrogators of Japanese POWS during WWII. Having served as a missionary in Japan, he spoke Japanese and was familiar with the culture. His interrogation method essentially was asking them questions. He assured prisoners they were safe, made sure they got medical care if they were injured, and built relationships by talking about home with them. The article brought up the classic example of a prisoner who knows where a ticking bomb is located. In that situation, even if a prisoner is tortured, all the prisoner has to do is withhold the secret long enough for the bomb to go off. I think part of the reason people support the use of torture its purpose in extracting information gets confused with punishment. My parents are a small sample, but they’re about as representative a pair of Americans as any. When Khalid Sheik Mohammed was captured, they insisted he should be tortured, without regard to any information he had. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2005, 12:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-torture-work/309770/32 "2005-06-26T00:42:23Z")
> [@xtisme](#): > > My final thought is…if torture really doesn’t work, why is its use so wide spread throughout the world? If it really doesn’t work, why do intelligence groups throughout the world train their people to resist it? Is it all just thousands of years of bullshit? I find that incredibly hard to believe, that its all sadism and bullshit without any effect at all. > > -XT I call it “the lottery effect”, even with so many losing or ineffective bets, some SOB’s do get lucky, and so the lotteries thrive and so does torture. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2005, 12:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-torture-work/309770/33 "2005-06-26T00:47:51Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > I call it “the lottery effect”, even with so many losing or ineffective bets, some SOB’s do get lucky, and so the lotteries thrive and so does torture. Maybe. Of course, the converse could be true too…maybe sometimes people resist and so folks say it doesn’t work at all. Personally I find the practice distasteful, especially when we are talking about the over the top physical abuse type torture. No self respecting libertarian type is going to be too comfortable with that kind of power in the hands of the state…reguardless of who the state happens to be. To me though the claim that torture in any form at all does not work is extraordinary…and for me to be convinced I’m going to need some extraordinary kind of proof that this is so. -XT ---
**Author:** ![furt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/439d5e/32.png) [@furt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/furt)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2005, 1:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-torture-work/309770/34 "2005-06-26T01:24:03Z")
> [@xtisme](#): > > My final thought is…if torture really doesn’t work, why is its use so wide spread throughout the world? I think you’re asking smart questions; I think _part_ of the answer is that there are various ways it can “work.” You are a Cruel Despot wanting to supress a rebellion. You capture a rebel and torture him enough so that he tells you that they are based in village A. So you burn it down and slaughter the inhabitants. Of course, they were actually based in village B. But seeing A burned to the ground, and seeing the shattered shell of an informer you release from your jail, they may well decide to stop supporting the rebellion. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2005, 1:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-torture-work/309770/35 "2005-06-26T01:30:22Z")
> [@xtisme](#): > > Maybe. Of course, the converse could be true too…maybe sometimes people resist and so folks say it doesn’t work at all. Personally I find the practice distasteful, especially when we are talking about the over the top physical abuse type torture. No self respecting libertarian type is going to be too comfortable with that kind of power in the hands of the state…reguardless of who the state happens to be. > > To me though the claim that torture in any form at all does not work is extraordinary…and for me to be convinced I’m going to need some extraordinary kind of proof that this is so. > > -XT Do you think the people who confessed to witchcraft thanks to torture were all guilty? ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2005, 1:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-torture-work/309770/36 "2005-06-26T01:41:33Z")
I agree torture is sometimes used as an intimidation factor - an extreme form of punishment to deter activities that state opposes. But I remain unconvinced that torture is also a generally ineffective means for getting information. I think some of the people who are arguing this position are trying to make the moral question go away by making it moot. The moral decision is easy when the question is “would you be willing to make somebody else suffer for no useful reason?” But if the question becomes “would you be willing to make somebody else suffer if it promotes a greater good?” and the moral issue becomes much harder to address. Some people want to avoid difficult moral questions by simplifying them and changing the terms of the question. ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2005, 1:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-torture-work/309770/37 "2005-06-26T01:43:43Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > Do you think the people who confessed to witchcraft thanks to torture were all guilty? This fall under the already mentionned “I’ll torture you until you’ll admit to your guilt” category. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2005, 2:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-torture-work/309770/38 "2005-06-26T02:03:18Z")
> [@clairobscur](#): > > This fall under the already mentionned “I’ll torture you until you’ll admit to your guilt” category. I was replying to **xtisme** ’s “the claim that torture in any form at all does not work is extraordinary” Are you saying then that because the torturers did succeed in getting a confession, regardless if it was false, that then torture works? Sure it did in the sense that the church got a hold of the possessions of the executed, by golly it did work. ---
**Author:** ![wevets](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e9a140/32.png) [@wevets](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wevets)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2005, 2:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-torture-work/309770/39 "2005-06-26T02:10:11Z")
> [@clairobscur](#): > > Why do you assume that the torturer would be stupid and would go on insisting until he would get an answer that would only mislead him? In the hypothetical you were presented with, the point of this question was precisely to know whether the suspect actually knew something. Well, I’m not a torturer, so perhaps you can tell me: when do you decide that someone under torture has no useful information to give? Do you just stop without finding out anything? I thought the purpose of torture was to break people’s will to resist and get them to answer questions… > [@](#): > > Besides, wouldn’t this equally apply to a regular interrogation? If the interrogator has already decided that the suspect is guilty and keep on interrogating him until he gets the answer he wants, and the suspect is actually not guilty, the interrogator is wasting his time. At least in the U.S. I expect interrogations to sometime give way to trials where a jury can decide on guilt and the defendant has a right not to incriminate him/herself. In a military situation, I’d expect regular interrogation, but no torture that presses someone to give answers he/she might not have. I’m not going to go out on a limb and say torture **never** works, but I think it’s widespread use is likely to cause more problems than it solves. Does anyone know what regular use of torture will do psychologically to the soldiers asked to perform it? Will they be able to integrate into civilian life when they leave the military? Will they become sadists? > [@](#): > > It seems to me that in this case, you’re precisely doing what I mentioned above : assuming that the interogator is going to use torture stupidely. While actually, not only he probably doesn’t, but he has much more knowledge about torture, its results, its limits, the possible behaviors of the victim, etc…that you could ever imagine. I dunno… I’ve got a pretty good imagination and I’d be surprised if you could divine its contents from the few comments I’ve posted on the SDMB. 😉 Perhaps you can tell us how the torturer works his way around this dilemma? I’m sure not going to accept the fallacy of [arguement from authority](http://www.datanation.com/fallacies/aa.htm) in this case. How much do you expect me to trust people who make their living causing pain to other human beings? > [@](#): > > As already mentionned if it was so inneficient a method, why was it, why is it still so widely used? Even in a number of democracies… Torture is very effective… just not as a method of obtaining reliable information. It’s great to indoctrinate people, instill fear, discourage dissent, etc… ---
**Author:** ![wevets](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e9a140/32.png) [@wevets](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wevets)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2005, 2:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-torture-work/309770/40 "2005-06-26T02:18:42Z")
> [@Little Nemo](#): > > I think some of the people who are arguing this position are trying to make the moral question go away by making it moot. I would assume everyone here is probably familiar with the moral issues, and if they favor using torture, they won’t be swayed by it. Then if I’m going to try to convince them to go against the use of torture, the moral question is already moot because it didn’t convince them, so that’s why this thread is about the other issues involved. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-torture-work/309770.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-torture-work/309770.md?page=3)