| Mark Bowden's 'The Dark Art of Interrogation' is still the modern standard for what torture does and doesn't do. Mr. Shane offers a quick review of the problem in the NYT, and given our 'debate' yesterday with the Toronto Troll™, it's a useful article. |
HOW do you get a terrorist to talk? Despite the questioning of tens of thousands of captives in Iraq and Afghanistan in the last six years, and a high-decibel political battle over torture, experts say there has been little serious research to answer that crucial question.
The Bush administration has yet to fill the void, instead getting enmeshed in a defense of waterboarding — which the Central Intelligence Agency says it has not used in five years but which critics have seized on as a powerful symbol of how not to conduct war. And Congress, for its part, has skipped over the question in passing a bill (knowing that it would be vetoed by President Bush) that bans harsh interrogations but requires the C.I.A. to use only the tactics listed in the Army’s playbook.
Certainly the debate is rich in emotion, with each side claiming the moral heights: You approve torture! YouÂ’re coddling terrorists! But the arguments have been scant on science to back them up.
“We don’t have any idea — other than anecdote or moral philosophy — what really works,” said Benjamin Wittes of the Brookings Institution, author of “Law and the Long War: The Future of Justice in the Age of Terror,” set to be published in June.