Torture: does it work?

[Xant]

So, what is the common consensus here, does torture work? Or does it just make the victim say anything to stop the pain, hence making it useless?

http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2009/09/21/the-tortured-brain.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/8833108/Torture-is-not-wrong-it-just-doesnt-work-says-former-interrogator.html
http://georgewashington2.blogspot.fi/2009/04/top-interrogation-experts-say-torture.html

[Angantyr]

Works well to make people sign papers so you can prosecute them for terrorism and win 'the numbers game' ('choose between 10 more years here with gruesome torture and seeing your daughter raped in front of your eyes or admit to something we all know you haven't done and we'll give you 20 in another prison and it looks like we're actually doing our job' - this is close to many cases in Guantanamo, which the tribunal of US juries have mostly themselves called a farce before leaving in protest) and maintain the illusion of moral justification. Other than that, no, there's pretty much consensus in the scientific world and among intelligence specialists that it doesn't.

The numbers game is mostly the case in Iraq and Afghanistan, but there's also the fear factor. For example during the Vietnam War the Phoenix Program was mainly to terrorize and spread fear among the civilian population.

The Phoenix Program (Vietnamese: Chiến dịch Phụng Hoàng, a word related to fenghuang, the Chinese phoenix) was a program designed, coordinated, and executed by the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), United States special operations forces, special forces operatives from the Australian Army Training Team Vietnam (AATTV),[1] and the Republic of Vietnam's (South Vietnam) security apparatus during the Vietnam War.


Original unissued patch
The Program was designed to identify and "neutralize" (via infiltration, capture, terrorism, torture, and assassination) the infrastructure of the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam (NLF or Viet Cong).[2][3][4][5] Historian Douglas Valentine states that "Central to Phoenix is the fact that it targeted civilians, not soldiers".[6] The major two components of the program were Provincial Reconnaissance Units (PRUs) and regional interrogation centers. PRUs would kill and capture suspected VC. They would also capture civilians who were thought to have information on VC activities. Many of these civilians were then taken to the interrogation centers where some were tortured in an attempt to gain intelligence on VC activities in the area.[7] The information extracted at the centers was then given to military commanders, who would use it to task the PRU with further capture and assassination missions.[7]
The program was in operation between 1965 and 1972, and similar efforts existed both before and after that period. By 1972, Phoenix operatives had "neutralized" 81,740 suspected NLF operatives, informants and supporters, of whom 26,369 were killed.[8] A Saigon government document states that, under Phoenix, 40,994 suspected enemy civilians were assassinated and another 19,257 were convicted, from 1968-1971.[9]

- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_Program

If you watch or read some of the testimonies of the agents connected to this program (plenty of documentaries around) you will find that suspicions on which grounds torture and murder were conducted were mostly manufactured or they simply randomly chose people in villages (a lot of women and young girls, for reasons I'll let your imagination determine).

Acts commited included letting women starve to death in tiger cages, drilling holes through people's skulls, raping people with snakes, removing eyeballs with spoons and hammering nails so far into the ears of victims that they came out on the other side.

[Sir_Hans]

I think torture works better as a form of revenge, rather than a tool in interrogation.
But that's not to say it's completely useless in an interrogation.

The main mistake is using torture in an interrogation to "look for" what's someone is hiding. Which leads to a lot of torturing of people who really don't have "valuable" information, so they start making up information at random or saying anything they can find to make the torture stop.

I think it's only useful when you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that the victim is hiding/withholding knowledge that you need to extract. Rather than using to to check if they have information to hide/withhold.

That said, I think torture should always be considered a crime, whether its done by an individual person, a government agency, or a private facility funded by the government. It's like the ultimate heinous act you can deploy on your fellow man/woman/child.

[Angantyr]

It is interesting that torture is often in modern times defended by the 'ticking bomb' scenario, made popular by propaganda series such as 24 hours.

A scenario which is solely based in imagination, however, with the historical record bereft of any such circumstances.

Btw, as if the world didn't already seem completely on its head:

Michael Chertoff, the Homeland Security Chief under Bush, declared that 24 "reflects real life", John Yoo, the former Justice Department lawyer who produced the torture memos cited Bauer in support while Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia went further, "Jack Bauer saved Los Angeles... He saved hundreds of thousands of lives. Are you going to convict Jack Bauer?".[6] One of the shows' creators stated:
Most terrorism experts will tell you that the ‘ticking time bomb’ situation never occurs in real life, or very rarely. But on our show it happens every week.[1]
The show uses the same techniques that are used by the US against alleged Al-Qaeda suspects. U.S. Army Brigadier General Patrick Finnegan, the dean of the United States Military Academy at West Point, and others, objected to the central theme of the show—that the letter of American law must be sacrificed for the country’s security—as it had an adverse effect on the training of actual American soldiers by advocating unethical and illegal behavior. As Finnegan said:
The kids see it, and say, 'If torture is wrong, what about "24"?'
He continued,
The disturbing thing is that although torture may cause Jack Bauer some angst, it is always the patriotic thing to do.[1]

- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ticking_time_bomb_scenario

[Dezilagel]

I think that torture is definitively not as effective as those who practice it would like to think.

If you have to resort to physical violence to break a person you've already lost. You're never going to get nearly as good quality of information as from someone who is truly cooperative.
All you're going to accomplish, apart from maybe satisfying some perverted lust for power over another, is getting confusing and misleading information from someone who is at his or her most desperate. (who is still your enemy and probably holds greater pride than you)

It is a disgusting war crime which clearly highlights some of the darkest facets of human nature. And it's still practiced today, even in some "civilized" countries.

Bleach.

[Kafein]

Torture is only ever going to be "useful" as a means to threaten people into doing or saying things that you want them to say, no matter what it happens to be, true or false.

[LordBerenger]

*Mandatory anti-US comment from some random Anti-American European brainwashed by the Arab immigrants*

[zagibu]

*Mandatory anti-US comment from some random Anti-American European brainwashed by the Arab immigrants*

Nice try. Now get back to the gym, and let the smart people talk, will you?

[Xant]

However, if there is a way to (almost) immediately verify the information, does torture work then? If you have, say, a safe in the same room as the person you're torturing and you know they know the code, and you can try the code immediately. Is torture effective in that scenario and similar scenarios, where you can verify the information and then continue the torture if you were lied to?

[zagibu]

Well, how can you be sure the person actually knows the code?

[Overdriven]

Although it's dirty if possible I'd have thought some form of black mail would be preferable to any torture. Torture may seem like a quicker way I suppose but it's undeniably a disgusting, and far from reliable means of getting information. Everyone has some form of leverage that can be exacted through blackmail. And although again it can result in unreliable information,  I'd have said that's a much better way of going about it if you have to.

[Xant]

Well, how can you be sure the person actually knows the code?

Irrelevant. Assume the premise is true. Think of it as a thought experiment.

Although, even if we were to treat it as a real scenario, I don't see how your question is relevant. Are you suggesting that it would be impossible to know the person has the code? I can think of millions of ways to be reasonably sure, about as sure as you can be of anything. More importantly, would it matter if you knew about them knowing since you can instantly verify their answers?

[Armpit_Sweat]

However, if there is a way to (almost) immediately verify the information, does torture work then? If you have, say, a safe in the same room as the person you're torturing and you know they know the code, and you can try the code immediately. Is torture effective in that scenario and similar scenarios, where you can verify the information and then continue the torture if you were lied to?

I know one thing:
 
If I would have to extract information from an average person ( not some sort of medieval-religious-martyr-fanatic-type ), and i would have one week, and a this kit:
 
visitors can't see pics , please register or login
 
 
I would know all i want It would not be a question of intensity of pain, it would be a question of finally ending the agony of a biological mass, that was "a person" at some point far far away, in another galaxy...

Although, there might be few well trained, astronaut level of psychological stability individuals, who might be able to go in a "meditation mode", and just keep screaming like animal for the whole duration, until their brain would give up, or keep repeating well learned misinformation. But even then, there might be a surgical way of removing the parts of the brain, that are responsible for control of certain processes, that would turn a human into a vegetable, without damaging their speech and memory.

EDIT:

Now, after re-reading what i wrote, i admit that it sounds a bit too edgy... Well, I am not an "evil" guy, but i have seen one of my close family members turning into a vegetable in a duration of few years time ( desease + medication ), i know from a personal experience, how much one's brain effects one's personality - so I presume, that what we call "reason", "logic" and "willpower" is close to NOTHING, against the biology and "forces of nature"... As sad as it is, there must be only this much a brain can take, afterwards it is ... hard even to describe.. but not human anymore

[Turboflex]

Guys like KSM deserve to be waterboarded a few hundred times.

[Torost]

Torture is nasty stuff.

The real problem is that there is no real downside to using it if you are cold as ice, have no compassion.
It will prob taint your reputation should it be known, since we have UN treatys , geneva convention etc...
Like Gitmo , you just reclassify what an enemy combatant is.
Redefine what is torture... google some of Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfelts quotes on the matter..


Torture works : you get information of varying degree of importance + a broken person.
torture fails or person didnt know anything  : you get nothing + a broken person.

If you do not care about people suffering there is no downside.

the only effective counter is I see is either total silence, not saying one word.
Or just ramble away with excessive amounts of hard to verify info, so that should you slip up later it will be hard to know what is real and what is false.

Either way. if you find yourself in this situation... you are pretty much fucked..

The most you can really strive for is to remain silient for x amount of time , so that those affected may have a chance to notice that you are missing and can take measures to negate the effect of the spill.

Without any numbers or fact, I suspect most tortured people have not had any vital information, that it has been used just to punish and degrade.
Much like rape is used as a weapon to break an entire population.
Sadistic peoples playground.

Psyops, to spread fear and deter people from engaging in activities you do not want them to do.

/topofmyheadrant