It's crucial that this become the conventional wisdom: Torture is rarely an effective means of getting reliable information.
I can understand why most people think it would be. Torture has the advantage of sounding effective - people apply the possibility to themselves, i.e., "Would I give up information if I were tortured?" the answer is usually, "Of course!" Aside from seeming intuitively true, however, the idea that torture consistently produces reliable intelligence is considered dubious by the interrogators, psychologists, and experts who best understand the practice and its results.
Torture is a great technique for making people say what you want. Looking to convert people to your religion? Torture is a quick way to do it (or to at least have people declare their conversion, more specifically). Want to have citizens declare allegiance to your autocratic state? Again, torture is the way to go. Need a confession, and not too concerned whether or not it's true? Yea for torture! Torture frequently elicits lies, specifically lies designed to satisfy the torturer and therefore end the pain -- and believe me, people will say anything to end the kind of pain and terror that comes from torture, even as a result of methods that don't leave physical scars, such as waterboarding. The information that comes from torture is of such questionable reliability that it is often hard to take seriously, and there are great risks of being diverted from accurate information through chasing down fake leads from people who lie to escape the pain.
There is also, of course, the consideration and viewpoint that torture exacts a heavy burden from both the individual who tortures and the society that condones it. I'm not a particularly squeamish individual, but if we managed to survive, y'know, World War I, World War II, and the Cold War without legalizing torture -- in recognition that our values and our Constitution are more important than our fear -- I think we can do without it today.
As for the usual hysterics about a ticking time-bomb scenario, I'll leave it to an expert to explain, from the article linked above:
[Former FBI agent and interrogator Jack] Cloonan dismissed the notion of the "ticking time-bomb" scenario in which interrogators must beat information out of someone quickly to prevent an attack. "Let's deal with the reality of the situation: Generally speaking, that's not going to happen," he said. "It doesn't happen in the real world, so we don't need to go to that level."Of course, the other side is also argued eloquently and persuasively, like in this reported statement by Charles Graner, one of the ringleaders of torture at Abu Ghraib:
The Christian in me says it's wrong, but the corrections officer in me says, 'I love to make a grown man p--- himself.'Torture: bad for intelligence, bad for democracy, good for making a grown man p--- himself.
