Anyone who makes torture a question of efficiency has already conceded most of the argument, and now if this absurd non-research is undermined, proponents of torture come out ahead.

And it's easy enough to undermine this junk!

The Panel of Experts of Ireland's Chief Scientific Adviser... and isn't that a grand title for an ad hoc committee of "experts" with no experience of torture on one side or the other...

These experts with no experience pretend that a small deficit in long-term memory is likely to erase a memory like...

Where did I hide the bomb?

Golly, the last time you waterboarded me, I forgot where I hid the bomb, so now I have to make something up!

At this level of "science," it's all just fuzzy words, one memory is just like another, and apparently nobody within miles of this bogus project was perspicacious enough to ask...

What kind of memories does stress impair?

Are they like the name of your wife? Or where Abdul hid the bomb?

Or more like... what color shoes was Abdul wearing when he hid the bomb?

So now we have an "argument" against torture that anybody who ever critiqued a psychological experiment could demolish in one second, and isn't that helpful to Dick Cheney and nobody else?

There may be some situations where the issue is not so much accuracy or availability of weak memories or clear thinking. If some diabolical CIA agent or hate-crazed soldier who has been electrocuting me for an hour and is threatening to nail parts of my anatomy to the table if I don't tell him where I was born, then it may well work. If said animal is trying to get me to tell him what I had for lunch two weeks ago Friday, it may actually work against his purported goal. That is, if the information sought is not easily remembered by the victim, then pain isn't going to make the memory easier to pull up. If the victim knows clearly what the psychopath wants, then the issue of impairment is not so critical.

I suspect torture sometimes "works", depending on what "works" means, and depending on what is trying to be accomplished.

Torture Has been around for several millenia, so someone out there must think it works.

as noted above, the death penalty has been around for millenia. so far, it hasn't stopped murders from being committed. if that's your basis for legitimizing conduct, you need to go back to logic 101.

It does work as a propaganda tool to fire up their base. They've managed to defend the undefendable as some noble cause.

When the Soviet Union used hidden cameras, wiretapping and torture, American's everywhere were appalled. Flag waving politician across the country condemned these actions as Unamerican. The KGB was the symbol of everything we weren't.

The fact that this even continues to be a topic of debate in this country shows just how far we've regressed as a nation of principles.

Let's face it, for some, fear and/or discomfort and/or pain will make them 'fess up right quick.

And for others, just the opposite.

And for others still, some mix or blend of the two.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney called torture as a recruiting tool for Al Qaida a 'mantra' and stated that it was untrue. Wayne Simmons, a former CIA agent, called it 'preposterous' when I made this argument over the past weekend on Fox and Friends. Ann Coulter questioned it. Bill O'Reilly. Laura Ingraham. Brit Hume. And a host of others. Of course, none of the above mentioned individuals have interrogated an Al Qaida member, and with the exception of Wayne Simmons, worked as an intelligence officer or served in the military. So let's turn to individuals who have supported this argument.

This weekend on Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer, Senator John McCain had the following to say:

I think that these interrogations once publicized helped al Qaeda recruit. I got that from an al Qaeda operative in a prison camp in Iraq who told-- who told me that.

He goes on to say:

    I was in -- Senator Lindsey Graham and I were in -- in Camp Bucca, the twenty-thousand-prisoner camp. We met with a former high-ranking member of al Qaeda. I said, "How did you succeed so well in Iraq after the initial invasions?" He said two things. One, the chaos that existed after the initial invasion, there was no order of any kind. Two, he said, Abu Ghraib pictures allowed me and helped me to recruit thousands of young men to our cause. Now that's al Qaeda.

Former General Counsel to the Navy Alberto Mora has stated this same conclusion in testimony to Congress more than a year ago. He said:

    There are serving U.S. flag-rank officers who maintain that the first and second identifiable causes of U.S. combat deaths in Iraq -- as judged by their effectiveness in recruiting insurgent fighters into combat -- are, respectively the symbols of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.

General Ray Odierno:

    The graphic revelations of detainee abuse motivated some terrorists including foreign fighters from Syria, Yemen and Saudi Arabia to join the jihad.

General David Petraeus:

    An influx of foreign fighters from outside Afghanistan and new recruits from within Afghan could materialize, as the new photos serve as potent recruiting material to attract new members to join the insurgency.

From the SENATE ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE INQUIRY INTO THE TREATMENT OF DETAINEES IN U.S. CUSTODY:

    Treating detainees harshly only reinforces that distorted view, increases resistance to cooperation, and creates new enemies.

Mandatory Link

As for the study coming to a 'politically correct' conclusion, to be published it would be routinely reviewed by other authorities in this area of study(otherwise known as peer-reviewed) before being accepted for publication, and the identities of the peer-reviewers would be unknown to the author(s) of said paper, so that logrolling and the publication of a paper for political rather than scientific reasons would be harder to accomplish.