Cliff May has some thoughts.

Torture is so last millenium. I propose we use a softer approach to extract information from captured terrorists.

Implantation of electrodes into certain areas of the brain can directly stimulate the neural circuitry that underlies pleasure, pain, and desire. Finding those locations that cause pleasure should be straightforward: allow the subjects to self-stimulate and find the ones they like. Then, once they're good and addicted (and that's the right word; these are the same parts of the brain involved in drug addiction), withhold the stimulus unless they cooperate. The carrot works better than the stick. The goal is not punishment or retribution, but subversion of the will.

Torture wouldn't bother me so much if it could be relied upon to produce useful intelligence. If someone really was going to gas the NY subways (for example) surely they'd have several layers of lies ready to give up to the interrogators to muddle the issues before getting to the truth.

Insofar as torture can used to persuade most humans to freely confess they are in fact spies for the Klingons or perhaps a Cylon cyborg or are related to Santa Claus, the pragmatic usefulness of torture is very much in doubt, in my opinion.

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The downside? We torture a person taken by mistake. Typo on the paperwork. Corey Maye, for example.

My problem with torture is that it's routinely misused, even in the US where it's illegal, to obtain fake confessions or just to make someone's life hell. So my concern here is whether the benefits of torture (eg, in lives saved) are going to be outweighed by the costs (a lower legal threshhold for torturing innocent people).

The article seems to think that we can err more on the side of torture, and I got to admit that if there are lives at stake, torture appears warranted. Still we have to consider whether allowing increased use of torture is a better improvement than fixing organization and communication flaws as demonstrated in the Coleen Rowley affair.

Andrew Sullivan quotes this:

"I said he was important," Bush reportedly told Tenet at one of their daily meetings. "You're not going to let me lose face on this, are you?" "No sir, Mr. President," Tenet replied. Bush "was fixated on how to get [Abu] Zubaydah to tell us the truth," Suskind writes, and he asked one briefer, "Do some of these harsh methods really work?" Interrogators did their best to find out, Suskind reports. They strapped Abu Zubaydah to a water-board, which reproduces the agony of drowning. They threatened him with certain death. They withheld medication. They bombarded him with deafening noise and harsh lights, depriving him of sleep. Under that duress, he began to speak of plots of every variety - against shopping malls, banks, supermarkets, water systems, nuclear plants, apartment buildings, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Statue of Liberty. With each new tale, "thousands of uniformed men and women raced in a panic to each . . . target." And so, Suskind writes, "the United States would torture a mentally disturbed man and then leap, screaming, at every word he uttered."

Hyberbole, perhaps. But the question stands.

Does torture work?

Most people are pragmatic enough to give the provider of torture anything they want to here, without regard to the facts.

Implantation of electrodes into certain areas of the brain can directly stimulate the neural circuitry that underlies pleasure, pain, and desire. Finding those locations that cause pleasure should be straightforward: allow the subjects to self-stimulate and find the ones they like.

Plus, any research that DoD does into the area is capable of being used for good. Treatments for severe depression and parkinsons disease come to mind.