If Cheney’s for torture, why not use it on Scooter?

3 thoughts on “If Cheney’s for torture, why not use it on Scooter?”

1. Huh.

   You don’t like torture, but would have no problem torturing people you don’t agree with, politically.

   You see, the same thing is going on, except instead of your petty reasons – political disagreements – the reasons are ‘because they want to kill us’.

2. No, I don’t think anyone should be tortured, including Scooter Libby. (I don’t even know if I “don’t agree with” Libby “politically” since I don’t know anything explicit about Libby’s politics.)

   I thought that the suggestion that Libby qualifies for torture was a good way to bring home what a dangerous thing it is to start OK’ing torture.

   Apparently that didn’t come across, though.

3. One of the interesting things about torture that I’ve heard several times from experienced interrogators (in media interviews) is that it doesn’t really work. Apparently the person being tortured is willing to say just about anything to make it stop. Whether they say true things is optional. The important thing is that the pain ends.

   This makes it less reliable than other methods of interrogation.

   Hence torturing people “because they want to kill us” is only useful if your goal is to cause them pain. If you want information, you’d be better off doing something else.

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