Despite the onslaught of Cheney interviews where he says that we needed to torture use enhanced interrogation to get information out of terrorists, the facts are simply not on the ex-VP's side. All Cheney is trying to do is to cover his ass, and so is every single Bushie coming out of the woodwork now that pushes the false idea that torturing terror suspects gets good information out of them. The reality is, in words a three-year-old can understand is, "nuh-uh."
From McClatchy:
WASHINGTON — The CIA inspector general in 2004 found that there was no conclusive proof that waterboarding or other harsh interrogation techniques helped the Bush administration thwart any "specific imminent attacks," according to recently declassified Justice Department memos.
That undercuts assertions by former vice president Dick Cheney and other former Bush administration officials that the use of harsh interrogation tactics including waterboarding, which is widely considered torture, was justified because it headed off terrorist attacks.[...]
The IG's report is among several indications that the Bush administration's use of abusive interrogation methods was less productive than some former administration officials have claimed.
Even some of those in the military who developed the techniques warned that the information they produced was "less reliable" than that gained by traditional psychological measures, and that using them would produce an "intolerable public and political backlash when discovered," according to a Senate Armed Services Committee report released on Tuesday.
Even with everything that we've learned to date, there is still more classified material out there that government has not released. It has been hinted at that the documents and videos the CIA had destroyed were more horrific than anyone in the outside world has seen to date. With all of this evidence, it leads us back to two simple points, that torture does not work and that those that engage and/or order it should be held accountable for their actions. The United States knew it didn't work back in World War II and we even executed Japanese soldiers at that time who practiced techniques such as waterboarding on our very own troops. There is no reason that our standards should change as a nation that respects the rule of law, whether we are fighting Hitler, Mussolini and Hirohito or Al Qaeda and the Taliban.
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