The Republican right wing, from Dick and Liz Cheney, down through the chief apologists and liars at Faux News, have continued to raise the issue of the high quality of intelligence gathered through enhanced interrogation techniques to justify the use of torture in questioning detainees at Gitmo and CIA-operated "black" sites around the world.
Many on the left, have countered those arguments using statements from the many of the actual interrogators that the intelligence gained was incorrect, or are simply statements by those being questioned who thought it was what the interrogator wanted to hear. Both useless pieces of information, but irrelevant to the question of torture itself.
Torture is wrong. It is wrong if you get bad information out of the detainee; it is also wrong if you get perfect information out of him or her.
Why is it wrong? Because we (the US) do not want our soldiers subjected to torture in any shape or form, and we have prosecuted and would wish to continue to prosecute those who who perform these same so-called enhanced interrogation techniques on captured US soldiers. Once our personnel started doing this to the detainees we lost whatever high ground we occupied: we cannot say that it is okay for the US to torture, but not okay for anyone else.
If torture is wrong, ab initio, then whatever arguments the right wing would choose for its justification are not just worthless, we should cut off all further discussion.
That's it. 'Nuff said.
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