Torture = ?

Stupid Random Thoughts comments on a StrategyPage article regarding torture and the effort to control it, and how that effort trips up on the definition of terror. He speaks as a former military interrogator, and he says this:

You can’t get information from someone who just sits there and smiles back, knowing that I won’t touch him.

Which may be true. Police can avoid beating the truth out of suspects because they have the stick of jailtime and the carrot of reduced jailtime to work with. But how are you going to convince someone who believes he gets his seventy-two virgins as soon as he dies?

On the other hand, there's the idea that beating itself may only convince a perp to tell you what you already think you know. Remember Reservoir Dogs?:

If you beat this *expletive* long enough, he'll tell you he started the *expletive* Chicago fire! Now that doesn't necessarily make it *expletive* so!

I think we need to start defining "torture" internally at least, and then our troops need to know a) what we will do and won't do, and b) that what we will do will be effective. Because if the latter isn't true, than the former doesn't matter. Orders will be given, and scapegoats found. Think Calley.