Andrew Sullivan on how the Bush administration defines torture.
Y'know, I keep reading how military men say that torture doesn't work; that it simultaneously leads to us (in this case) getting information that is questionable at best while also ratcheting up the chance that others will torture our soldiers…and still, the U.S. apparently engages in it and Bush manuevers to keep some form of it going. Has anyone credible yet come forward to argue that, oh no, we get great, accurate information from torture and it doesn't place our troops in any greater physical jeopardy? I don't mean that to be as lopsided a question as it probably seems but I couldn't think of how else to phrase it.
I sense there are some people out there who simply like the idea of us torturing "the enemy" or even anyone who kinda looks like or might be part of "the enemy." These are the same people who are happy when they hear a car bomb went off in downtown Baghdad killing 80 people because they figure the odds are that there were probably a few terrorists or future terrorists in that eighty. Leave those people aside. Is there a sane case to be made for practices that fit a reasonable definition of torture? Has any genuine military authority come forth to make that case? Or is the only controversy here what constitutes "torture?"