# Torture doesn't work **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [March 30, 2016, 5:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/torture-doesnt-work/750656 "2016-03-30T17:53:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 11
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2016, 11:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/torture-doesnt-work/750656/201 "2016-04-07T23:37:16Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > They only found one person who gave out info to the gestapo under torture. Not sure who “they” are, but I’d bet the number is much greater than one. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2016, 12:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/torture-doesnt-work/750656/202 "2016-04-08T00:00:57Z")
Does torture always work? No. Does torture never work? No. Does torture sometimes work? Probably. ---
**Author:** ![UDS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecae2f/32.png) [@UDS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UDS)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2016, 1:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/torture-doesnt-work/750656/203 "2016-04-08T01:13:33Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > Does torture always work? No. Does torture never work? No. Does torture sometimes work? Probably. . . . for certain values of “work”. ---
**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:** [April 8, 2016, 3:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/torture-doesnt-work/750656/204 "2016-04-08T03:13:40Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > Not sure who “they” are, but I’d bet the number is much greater than one. Well, “they” were people that actually had to suffer torture under the Gestapo too, and as the writer of the book “Torture and Democracy” noted, informants were in reality the ones that did the most damage to resistance movements, not the Gestapo torturers. And then there is still the issue of how infective torture was, even for the most efficient dictators. ““These tortures were all the more horrible,” remarked a French prisoner, “because the Germans in many cases had no clear idea of what information they wanted and just tortured haphazardly.” -From “Torture and Democracy” By Darius Rejali. ---
**Author:** ![CCitizen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/4af34b/32.png) [@CCitizen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CCitizen)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2016, 3:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/torture-doesnt-work/750656/205 "2016-04-08T03:54:36Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > You seem to be under the impression that people are arguing that torture doesn’t work because people can resist it. This is missing the point to a high degree. Torture doesn’t work because people break _too easily_. I buckle easily under any pressure. Some people have much stronger willpower. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2016, 3:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/torture-doesnt-work/750656/206 "2016-04-08T03:55:28Z")
If torture had really worked for the Gestapo in combating the French Resistance, they would have gone out and randomly tortured people who might have known things. If torture worked, there would have been no viable Resistance. ---
**Author:** ![UDS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecae2f/32.png) [@UDS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UDS)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2016, 3:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/torture-doesnt-work/750656/207 "2016-04-08T03:58:45Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > Well, “they” were people that actually had to suffer torture under the Gestapo too, and as the writer of the book “Torture and Democracy” noted, informants were in reality the ones that did the most damage to resistance movements, not the Gestapo torturers. And then there is still the issue of how infective torture was, even for the most efficient dictators. > > ““These tortures were all the more horrible,” remarked a French prisoner, “because the Germans in many cases had no clear idea of what information they wanted and just tortured haphazardly.” -From “Torture and Democracy” By Darius Rejali. Yup. Nazi torture was mainly carried out to terrorise and demoralise the resistance, and to discourage people from participating in the first place out of fear of how they would be treated if they did. Any genuinely new and useful information obtained by the torture was an added bonus (if it was recognised as useful, which it frequently wouldn’t have been, if the torturers weren’t after information). ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2016, 6:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/torture-doesnt-work/750656/208 "2016-04-08T06:35:22Z")
Anyway, to echo what someone posted earlier, if a fellow spy/agent were captured by an enemy notorious for torture, and this fellow spy/agent knew your alias, whereabouts, mission details, schedule, travel plans, etc., you’d have to possess incredible bravado or naivete to continue every aspect of your life unchanged, secure in the confidence that torture doesn’t work. ---
**Author:** ![UDS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecae2f/32.png) [@UDS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UDS)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2016, 7:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/torture-doesnt-work/750656/209 "2016-04-08T07:01:06Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > Anyway, to echo what someone posted earlier, if a fellow spy/agent were captured by an enemy notorious for torture, and this fellow spy/agent knew your alias, whereabouts, mission details, schedule, travel plans, etc., you’d have to possess incredible bravado or naivete to continue every aspect of your life unchanged, secure in the confidence that torture doesn’t work. Yes, of course. Because the fact that torture is not a terribly good way of extracting reliable intelligence doesn’t mean that there are _no_ good ways of extracting reliable intelligence. Obviously, if your fellow-agent is captured, your safety is compromised. This is so whether the enemy is “notorious for torture” or not. ---
**Author:** ![Grumman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/43a26b/32.png) [@Grumman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grumman)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2016, 7:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/torture-doesnt-work/750656/210 "2016-04-08T07:52:11Z")
So I guess this is the new “There’s no such thing as an atheist in a foxhole.” ---
**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:** [April 8, 2016, 9:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/torture-doesnt-work/750656/211 "2016-04-08T09:56:36Z")
> [@Grumman](#): > > So I guess this is the new “There’s no such thing as an atheist in a foxhole.” Well, I guess that like Trump many do forget the many times when torture (both harsh and “clean” ones) did not work to find the guilty, but it worked to condemn the innocent. > **['Bullpen Therapy' for the Central Park Five](https://www.huffpost.com/entry/bullpen-therapy-for-the-central-park-five_b_6647706)** > > Saturday, Feb. 7, was the third time I saw Joe Assadourian's The Bullpen, which addresses Assadourian's encounter with the New York criminal justice system. On this occasion, three of the Central Park Five were in attendance. Would they find humor in... > [@](#): > > Not until the 2012 documentary, Central Park Five, were their voices and story finally heard. Attending Assadourian’s show was part-therapy. Santana stated that being in prison is lonely, and that without support from family, anything is liable to happen to you. “Prison can kill your spirit, a social death,” he said. The documentary gave them a platform. When I asked Raymond about his impressions of the controversies surrounding Ferguson, Eric Garner, and Trayvon Martin, he replied that the Central Park Five were the original “stop and frisk.” Like Michael Brown, they were demonized in the media. There was no “innocent until proven guilty,” because the media had already convicted them. > > Assadourian responded that until his experience in the bullpen, he always wondered: How could a confession be coerced? He equated being in the bullpen to torture. You are awakened at 4 a.m. for trial and not returned to the bullpen until 11:30 p.m., and awakened again at 4 a.m. the next day, and the cycle continues. He noted that it causes such a state of delirium that you would confess to anything just to stop it. It reminds me of a similar situation in Chicago in the 1980s. Under Police Commander Jon Burge, police used torture tactics, electric shock to genitals and plastic-bag suffocation to make people arrested for traffic violations confess to heinous crimes. Over 100 African-American men were convicted during Jon Burge’s reign. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2016, 2:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/torture-doesnt-work/750656/212 "2016-04-08T14:59:28Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > Not a single cite that sez torture works in intelligence. > **[Bill Harlow](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Harlow)** > > Bill Harlow (born May 30, 1950) is a retired U.S. Navy captain, author, and public relations specialist. He has been the top spokesperson for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and worked in the White House dealing with National Security Media issues. > Circle William is a novel about two brothers. One brother, Jim, is the White House Press Secretary and his younger brother, Bill, is the captain of the USS Winston Churchill. When the United States' Government learns of Libya's plan to drop chem... This guy seems to think that it produces actionable intelligence. ---
**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:** [April 8, 2016, 3:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/torture-doesnt-work/750656/213 "2016-04-08T15:23:13Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > [Bill Harlow - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Harlow) > > This guy seems to think that it produces actionable intelligence. His was the minority report, as David Iglesias, a former U.S. attorney and war crimes prosecutor puts it, even what Bill Harlow declared was not convincing. In every case that the Senate committee looked at, the actual actionable evidence used came from non abusive interrogation tactics. > **[Is torture effective for gathering intelligence? - Part 2](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/torture-effective-gathering-intelligence)** Indeed, in the “Torture and Democracy” book the author points at many examples of torturers that claimed that their way was effective when in reality the ones checking on them found that most failed to gain any good information. The position that Harlow got into is precisely the same as many torturers that in the past were confronted later about how effective torture was, with evidence that their torture did not amount to much; the torturers are like the lottery winners that still continue to sell their books telling the gullible (even in democratic governments) that their system works and that it is reliable. ---
**Author:** ![MaxTheVool](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9fc29f/32.png) [@MaxTheVool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MaxTheVool)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2016, 3:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/torture-doesnt-work/750656/214 "2016-04-08T15:30:34Z")
> [@UDS](#): > > Yes, of course. Because the fact that torture is not a terribly good way of extracting reliable intelligence doesn’t mean that there are _no_ good ways of extracting reliable intelligence. Obviously, if your fellow-agent is captured, your safety is compromised. This is so whether the enemy is “notorious for torture” or not. I’ve lost track of who’s on what side of this debate, but there’s some bizarro-world argument which happens from time to time on the SDMB in which people try to overreach from “Torture is unreliable, often useless for intelligence gathering, and has so many ethical and practical side effects that we should as a society never use it\*” with a tiny asterisk recognizing the possibility of a once in a lifetime ticking bomb scenario, which the position I subscribe to; to “torture has never once yielded verifiably true information in the history of the world”. There are plenty of good arguments against torture without going quite that far. As a purely logical matter, torture is a tool. If Joe and Bob are both expert interrogators who approach their jobs with ruthless and emotionless efficiency but not sadism or cruelty, and Joe is given permission by his higher-ups to use any means necessary to get information out of prisoners, and Bob is given permission to use any means necessary _other than torture_, it takes a very circuitous argument with side effects and indirect feedback loops and so forth to believe that Joe won’t do at least somewhat better than Bob. Note that in this hypothetical, Joe isn’t required to torture all his prisoners, he should pick whatever variety of techniques makes the most sense for each individual one. Any prisoner who will respond better to non-torture techniques he will not torture. But torture is a tool in his arsenal, which it is not for Bob. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2016, 3:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/torture-doesnt-work/750656/215 "2016-04-08T15:32:20Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > Well, “they” were people that actually had to suffer torture under the Gestapo too, and as the writer of the book “Torture and Democracy” noted, informants were in reality the ones that did the most damage to resistance movements, not the Gestapo torturers. And then there is still the issue of how infective torture was, even for the most efficient dictators. > > ““These tortures were all the more horrible,” remarked a French prisoner, “because the Germans in many cases had no clear idea of what information they wanted and just tortured haphazardly.” -From “Torture and Democracy” By Darius Rejali. Speaking of the French. Didn’t the French virtually eradicate terrorist groups in Algeria, partly through the extensive use of torture? ---
**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:** [April 8, 2016, 3:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/torture-doesnt-work/750656/216 "2016-04-08T15:49:28Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > Speaking of the French. Didn’t the French virtually eradicate terrorist groups in Algeria, partly through the extensive use of torture? I also did check that history, suffice to say is that while the torturers made a lot of noise about the “progress” they made, the torture that was going on was well known among Algerians that had not been involved. The end result was the creation of more open opposition to French rule and the creation of even more radical groups that eventually forced the end of the rule of France over Algeria. ---
**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:** [April 8, 2016, 4:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/torture-doesnt-work/750656/217 "2016-04-08T16:05:48Z")
> [@MaxTheVool](#): > > As a purely logical matter, torture is a tool. If Joe and Bob are both expert interrogators who approach their jobs with ruthless and emotionless efficiency but not sadism or cruelty, and Joe is given permission by his higher-ups to use any means necessary to get information out of prisoners, and Bob is given permission to use any means necessary _other than torture_, it takes a very circuitous argument with side effects and indirect feedback loops and so forth to believe that Joe won’t do at least somewhat better than Bob. Note that in this hypothetical, Joe isn’t required to torture all his prisoners, he should pick whatever variety of techniques makes the most sense for each individual one. Any prisoner who will respond better to non-torture techniques he will not torture. But torture is a tool in his arsenal, which it is not for Bob. Not very convincing, this idea still misses that torture, besides not giving much better information, also creates new reasons for the enemy to continue fighting. It is indeed what General Jacques Massu finally concluded about the French torture in Algeria. > **[Torture during the Algerian War](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torture_during_the_Algerian_War_of_Independence#cite_ref-42)** > > Elements from the French Armed Forces used deliberate torture during the Algerian War (1954–1962), creating an ongoing public controversy. Pierre Vidal-Naquet, a renowned French historian, estimated that there were "hundreds of thousands of instances of torture" by the French military in Algeria. > The Algerian War was an armed conflict between the French Armed Forces and the Algerian National Liberation Front between the years 1954-1962 which ended with Algeria gaining independence from Franc... > [@](#): > > General Jacques Massu, had defended the use of torture in his 1972 book, The True Battle of Algiers (La vraie bataille d’Alger). He later declared to Le Monde in 2000 that “torture was not necessary and that we could have decided not to use it”.[42] ---
**Author:** ![MaxTheVool](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9fc29f/32.png) [@MaxTheVool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MaxTheVool)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2016, 7:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/torture-doesnt-work/750656/218 "2016-04-08T19:06:21Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > Not very convincing, this idea still misses that torture, besides not giving much better information, also creates new reasons for the enemy to continue fighting. It is indeed what General Jacques Massu finally concluded about the French torture in Algeria. > > [Torture during the Algerian War - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torture_during_the_Algerian_War_of_Independence#cite_ref-42) Sure, which is yet another reason why I don’t think torture should be legal. But again, there is a big difference between “torture is, on the whole, counterproductive” and “torture never works”. People in this thread keep conflating four questions, from macro to micro: (1) Whether an organization/state is generally going to be better off, more secure, societally healthier, etc, if it chooses to legally employ torture; and in particular whether the USA should choose to legally employ torture (2) Viewing a particular war or investigation or occupation in isolation, will one’s overall success in that endeavor increase or decrease if one chooses to use torture (3) Viewing intelligence-gathering in isolation, whether torture is a productive means of getting useful and actionable intelligence out of a subject (4) Viewing intelligence-gathering in isolation, whether torture can EVER get useful and actionable out of a subject (I realize that (2) and (3) sound awfully similar… the distinction I’m trying to make is that using torture might successfully lead you to more resistance cells, so was a success from a purely information-gathering standpoint, but at the same time your use of torture was making people hate you so much that new resistance cells were forming faster than they otherwise would… so torture was in that hypothetical a success for (3) but a failure for (2).) In my opinion, the answers are: (1) No (unless it’s such an evil society that its definition of “health” is alien to our values), and certainly not (2) This is the toughest one, I guess I don’t have the necessary expertise to answer it, but given that (1) is really the only question that really matters, I’m OK with not really knowing (3) Occasionally. It’s just a tool and having access to the tool has to be better than not having it. (4) Of course it can in some situations, particularly in cases where the information can be verified Now, I may well be wrong about (3) or (4). But the claim that torture literally never would get useful and actionable information, or that it would only be in the most preposterously contrived ticking bomb scenario, is a pretty extraordinary one, going contrary to my intuition as a human, and the weight of history. That said, however, people are frequently in this thread responding to comments about (3) or (4) with comments about (1) and (2). ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2016, 7:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/torture-doesnt-work/750656/219 "2016-04-08T19:13:41Z")
> [@MaxTheVool](#): > > (3) Viewing intelligence-gathering in isolation, whether torture is a productive means of getting useful and actionable intelligence out of a subject > > (3) Occasionally. It’s just a tool and having access to the tool has to be better than not having it… Well, it is not “productive”. The fact that once in a great while it has worked does not offset the moral issues and the waste of time the torturers have to spend looking into all the bogus leads if produces. Let us say you had a tool, a hammer. To get a machine working, you hit it with said hammer. Hey, it worked once, right? But it’d be better to use the _right_ tool and fix the machine, especially as after you used the hammer another time you broke the machine and it doesnt work at all now, it can’t even be repaired. In other words, in the end, using the wrong tool was counter-productive. _Torture is always counter-productive_. Yes, like a blind squirrel or a stopped clock, it does work once in a great while. But you waste huge amounts of manpower (and all your ethical or moral values) for little results. Remember- \*even the Gestapo \*didnt get productive results from torture. ---
**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:** [April 8, 2016, 7:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/torture-doesnt-work/750656/220 "2016-04-08T19:18:11Z")
> [@MaxTheVool](#): > > Now, I may well be wrong about (3) or (4). But the claim that torture literally never would get useful and actionable information, or that it would only be in the most preposterously contrived ticking bomb scenario, is a pretty extraordinary one, going contrary to my intuition as a human, and the weight of history. That said, however, people are frequently in this thread responding to comments about (3) or (4) with comments about (1) and (2). Good thing that that I’m not like that, I only point out that the cases that many propose as being good evidence in favor of the use of torture are not much clear as they want them to be, and once again, while we all do know that someone will win the lottery, we all have to realize that there is a reason why it is also called the “fools’ tax”; you have to realize that humanly speaking we all become convinced that playing the lottery when it goes to mega jackpots makes sense, but we should not maintain illusions that it is a good investment for all. Same goes for torture, even if we do know that it may had worked in some occasions it is still a very bad investment (or use) to use for our intelligence resources. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/torture-doesnt-work/750656.md?page=10) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/torture-doesnt-work/750656.md?page=12)