Yes, It’s Torture; Yes, It’s Ineffective. The Pentagon Says So

The military agency that advises the Pentagon on the use of harsh interrogation techniques warned the CIA and the Department of Justice in 2002 that the US policy on torture was ineffective, and it’s clear that they were defining harsh techniques as “torture.”

“The unintended consequence of a U.S. policy that provides for the torture of prisoners is that it could be used by our adversaries as justification for the torture of captured U.S. personnel,” says the document, an unsigned two-page attachment to a memo by the military’s Joint Personnel Recovery Agency.

Although the document refused to categorize waterboarding as torture, it did say:

“In essence, physical and/or psychological duress are viewed as an alternative to the more time-consuming conventional interrogation process. The error inherent in this line of thinking is the assumption that, through torture, the interrogator can extract reliable and accurate information. History and a consideration of human behavior would appear to refute this assumption.”

So, it is saying  “physical and/or psychological duress” is  “torture,” while trying to claim that waterboarding doesn’t qualify because it doesn’t cause “prolonged mental harm.”  Sounds like they’re trying to have it both ways.  But the bottom line is this: It doesn’t work.

By: Alan

Alan Colmes is the publisher of Liberaland.