Torture is not the answer

Well, waddaya know: turns out that torture isn’t the be-all and end-all of intelligence-gathering that the rabid wingnuts think it is. Via Balloon Juice:

The intelligence coup that led to killing abu Musab al-Zarqawi did not come from the torture-based methods that had become almost universal at that time. Instead a renegade unit tried handling suspects with respect, a novel approach recommended by the notable terrorist lovers in Israeli intelligence. The unit found a guerilla leader’s hideout among other useful information.

We turned several hard cases, including some foreign fighters, by using our new techniques. A few of them never abandoned the jihadist cause but still gave up critical information. One actually told me, “I thought you would torture me, and when you didn’t, I decided that everything I was told about Americans was wrong. That’s why I decided to cooperate.”

One of the commenters on the original post makes a very cogent point:

The biggest lie the right wingers got over on the subject of torture these past few years is that they were motivated by matters of security, or even by vengeance; but that isn’t true.

They wanted to torture because they wanted to be torturers. They wanted our nation to act in an undignified manner because they hate dignity itself.

Nobody, but nobody hates America and what good people have wanted America to stand for like right wingers and Republicans.

The far right has given up all hope of making the United States a country that its citizens can be proud of. They have abandoned all principles save one: the neurotic need to be safe at all costs, morals and laws be damned. Perhaps one day the US can regain the moral authority that the wingnuts have abandoned in so cavalier a manner.