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VDH's(
) article was pretty short (probably so it can be consumed by the masses before their brains turn off). But think about it. It must have brought results, else it would be a waste of time. While I'm sure there are many cases where the victim just says whatever will stop the torture, they have to understand that that info is going to be checked and if found wrong would cost them more than the truth.
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I'm not so sure. It seems like a whole lot of information is really not going to be verifiable. A guy might say that yeah, we scoped out XXXX site for a possible attack and that I did it with my friends Khalid and Muhammed who are now in Afghanistan. How do you check that?
All I know is that a lot of experts have said that torture is not actually very effective, especially when you can't verify the truth about the information. Of course, its very hard to present evidence that torture is effective, and it might be impossible to do so without compromising some security issues. However, this is still an important question and one that seems very much up in the air to me. I can't fathom just giving this administration the benefit of the doubt on this question. They are committed to the policy and will of course say it is effective.