Of course there are differences, but . . . . remember what you said:
This applies to any technique of gathering information.
You can link to copyrighted material; you just can’t cut and paste it into your post (unless it’s a short quotation). Linking subscription-only material is okay as well, but you should point out that it is subscription-only and expect that many readers won’t be able to access it.
Thanks. I read the rules, of course, but to be honest, sometimes in the throes of a heated debate the rules can get overlooked!
Without wishing to derail this thread, please allow me to say that this is a very interesting website. There are a number of threads in this forum that have me, ah, straining at the leash. However. One must get through the festive season first. 
I find this a naive and unsubstantiated overstatement.
It may be correct to say that torture doesn’t always work, or that it doesn’t always extract useful information. As you point out, it certainly cannot extract information which the informant does not possess. ( ?! )
I’m a fairly regular joe. I’m pretty sure that I would cough up more information under threat of harm or actual discomfort than I would if I get wine and cheese and due process no matter what I say. Since most humans are on some sort of a spectrum from spontaneous babblers to iron men, I suspect the average torturer figures it may or may not work but it’s worth a shot. The more expert they are, the more likely they’ll extract useful information.
When you phrase something so absolutely, it seems to reflect a political position more than anything else, perhaps in the hope that by selling the idea that torture does not work you will be in a better position to criticize those who advocate it as a necessary means toward a putatively noble end.
It would certainly work on my sorry and self-protective chicken ass.
I think this is true.
I am reminded of a buddy of mine who served in Korea. While he was being trained, he was very worried about the possibility of being tortured for information if he was captured. His commanding officer said words to the effect of “Tell them everything, because you know nothing.”
It might, if you had the information they wanted in the first place. Again, we are not talking about a television show or movie where they always grab the right bad guy, scare the shit out of him, and the information turns out to be vitally important the first time out. It is much more effective to use proper intelligence gathering procedures, instead of hoping you’ve got the right person to question, hoping he has information you can use, and hoping that you don’t have to waste hours, days or even months finding out if you were handed a load of crap by someone who would say anything his captors might want to hear just to stop being tortured. They have no way of telling truth from lie-there is no major torture technique that gathers only good and usable data.
Ask those who went to Viet Nam if that procedure stopped the torture.
I could, but I’m not sure what the point would be.
The point is, there main purpose of torture isn’t to get the person you are torturing to talk. It’s to point out to others, through example, that you will do anything to get what you want. When you add in false rumors about how the tortured gave up all sorts of valuable information, the effect is two-fold. The populace is scared into submission, and they will have doubts about the loyalty of those who were tortured, justifiably or not.
One thing I forget to add.
What do we call the side that will do anything to accomplish it’s goals?
Here’s a hint-in the movies, they wear black hats.
I would say it depends on the circumstances. Let’s assume for the sake of argument that many torturings are done solely to inflict pain on the victim. That doesn’t mean it’s always done for this reason. And it doesn’t mean that torture doesn’t work as a means of getting information.
Would there have been more torture in Vietnam if the victims had possessed more valuable information? My guess is yes, but neither of us knows the answer.
It seems to me that you are starting to argue the “should” question here. For the sake of this thread, I am happy to stipulate that torture is evil and wrong and should never be used by any government that claims to be civilized, except perhaps in some one in a billion type situation where the bad guy has the code to disarm the nuclear bomb or whatever.
How can you tell if the information you get from the tortured is accurate and/or useful?
Can someone come up with a concrete example of that type of torture situation happening, and its outcome?
Does that mean yes or no?
I don’t think it’s worth the trouble. Let’s stipulate for the sake of this thread that torture is always wrong (in a moral sense).
Can we also stipulate that, as a means of gathering accurate and useful information, its usefulness is iffy at best?
No. As I said before, it can be very useful, but only in the short term. If they are still getting after these guys in Guantanamo six years later, that is accomplishing absolutely nothing.
OK.
I’ll go along with this, too.
Well, how do you tell if information you’ve gotten from anybody is accurate and/or useful?
I’ve never been an interrogator; I would guess that you do things like record everything the prisoner tells you; carefully go over it all for inconsistencies; cross-check everything the prisoner tells you with other sources of information (including both other prisoners and other sources of intelligence). Note that the prisoner can’t really do any of this; the prisoner probably can’t even keep a record of his own statements, which puts him at a disadvantage in trying to keep his lies straight, if he’s just telling you a story.
Now, in real life, I don’t know of any cases of organizations which have both used torture and been sufficiently rational and interested in getting the actual truth that they bothered to do all that. On the one hand, the history of interrogations, even when torture is not being used, is full of people who are all too willing to accept what they wanted to hear in the first place, and of people jumping to conclusions without checking everything out first. On the other hand, many if not most people and organizations which have used torture have been mainly concerned with spreading terror and taking revenge on their opponents (real or imagined), or simply needing to fill some quota of witches or counterrevolutionaries or whatever the case may be by getting enough “confessions”.
I don’t want to argue in favor of torture; I just doubt the absolute statements that torture could never ever work under any circumstances because the statements produced by the tortured can’t be trusted to be reliable. That’s something you’ve got to deal with in any form of interrogation. For example, if you spend the time to win the prisoners trust–well, you’re basically lying to him to some degree; role-playing with him and feigning more sympathy than you probably really feel. How do you know he hasn’t been trained to recognize what you’re doing and isn’t bullshitting you right back? See above about recording and analyzing and cross-checking everything. You have to do that no matter what interrogation methods you’re using–whether you’re torturing the prisoner, offering him a deal if he talks (and/or threatening to throw the book at him if he doesn’t talk); or sharing a cigarette and talking about that time he spent as an exchange student in the States back in '37.
No. Depending of course on what you mean by “iffy.” Custodial interrogation without torture is arguably “iffy.” But it still can be very useful.