I encourage everyone to take the time to more thoroughly investigate such an important matter. To decide this policy is right after merely reading a few news reports and blogs about the success of the US’s use of torture doesn’t recognize how significant having one’s government legalize torture really is.

There are three major things to consider:
1) What are the benefits of using torture?
2) What are the trade offs?
3) How likely are the soldiers and CIA operatives going to follow the rules? Because you cannot evaluate a program by looking at the planning alone, you have to see what happens in practice.

Here are a couple discussions by those with expertise or thorough investigation of this issues.

http://dir.salon.com/story/opinion/feature/2004/06/18/torture_1/index.html
Part one: Torture’s dark allure; It gives its practitioners a drug-like rush. But it leaves a legacy of destruction that takes generations to undo.

http://dir.salon.com/story/opinion/feature/2004/06/21/torture_algiers/index.html
Part 2 Does torture work? ;The French military’s use of torture in Algeria is often cited as a success story. But the real story is more complex.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/torture/justify/
Is Torture Ever Justified, Frontline Roundtable Discussion

With that background, the followiong opinion piece presents what I think is the most profound drawback in using torture. It is why so many of us have a gut reaction that we can’t even believe we need to have a debate on using torture. As a moral human being, torture is unacceptable.

But more than just a personal conviction, it has been the official US position as long as I’ve been alive. Not that the US never engaged in torture, because during the civil rights movement many people in the country in official positions like police officers certainly did. And there have always been individual cases of police abuse that amounted to state torture. But it has never been something this country officially condoned.

http://vlal.bol.ucla.edu/Vinay/Torture.pdf#search=%22success%20of%20torture%22
Torture: An American Success Story; now that torture has been condoned by people in the highest positions in the US, one can be certain that many nations will feel encouraged to ignore whatever little constraints they may have had.

Before drawing your conclusion, take a look at the following articles which provide a glimpse of what this policy ends up being in practice beyond the abduction and torture of innocent people.

http://www.rense.com/general69/fail.htm
Fear Of Failure Drives Torture Train; Terrell E. Arnold; retired Career Foreign Service Officer who served in senior diplomatic posts abroad, including Economic/Commercial Counselor in Manila and Consul General in Sao Paulo. In Washington he served as Deputy Director of the Office of Counterterrorism and as Chairman of the Department of International Studies of the National War College. He is author, co-author and editor of five books, including a collection of essays titled _A World Less Safe

http://hrw.org/reports/2005/us0905/
Human Right Watch, Firsthand Accounts of Torture of Iraqi Detainees by the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne Division

http://www.salon.com/news/abu_ghraib/2006/03/14/introduction/
The Abu Ghraib files; 279 photographs and 19 videos from the Army’s internal investigation record a harrowing three months of detainee abuse inside the notorious prison — and make clear that many of those responsible have yet to be held accountable.

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/060227fa_fact
How an internal effort to ban the abuse and torture of detainees was thwarted.
by JANE MAYER, The New yorker

And finally, here’s a report which calls into question, has the torture resulted in success or merely lies about successes. This is the point I was making before. If as many plots were thwarted as claimed, why hasn’t Bush plastered those facts all over the place the same way they plastered the FL terrorist wannabes and the plot to mix liquids on planes?

You (or someone) in this blog mentioned the need for secrecy, but that is long past and not a credible reason this long after the fact. If they had kept the FL case secret, the claim would be more credible. And in the British case, there were reports the Brits were annoyed because they weren’t ready to reveal the plot but Bush wanted it public for his political advantage.

http://www.martinirepublic.com/item/bush-speech-brags-of-success-in-torture-of-insane-man/

It’s not like this administration has established a reputation for honesty.

Oops, he meant “stop the mild discomfort”.

O: In fact, you say in your report that more than a dozen plots — a dozen Al Qaeda plots to kill people were stopped because of the information they got from coerced interrogation.

R: That’s what we’re told by our sources.

O: Do you believe that?

R: I do believe that.

Actually, you reminded me to use them. It would be nice if you could preview or edit, though. We’ll see how this works…

I said a couple of times now, actually capture someone on a battlefield, fine, call them an enemy combatant. Pick up some poor sap changing planes in a US airport or abducted in Macedonia and you have a different picture. The legislation by many people’s opinion is unconstitutional. But in the meantime, Bush gets to wkeep on using tactics which violate the human rights of a variety of people.

Okay, fair point. But KSM, Ramzi bin Al-Shibh, Abu Zubaydah weren’t captured on battlefields. They were caught in Pakistan and then turned over to the US. Should they be tried as criminals?

If you can’t see the distinction between rounding up people all over the world on the flimsiest of charges and capturing German infiltrators during a declared war with Germany then you have a problem.

I see the distinction (I still have problems). But these guys, including one who claimed US citizenship, tried the Milligan defense. Which I thought was the point of your posts citing the decision. Their argument was shot down, and they fried. Which means current infiltrators (terrorists) should get the same treatment. Short of frying them, I mean. And Quirin holds that the military commissions apply regardless of the citizenship status of the combatant, if Congress has so authorized.

As for rounding up people all over the world, I agree that is a gray area. I don’t have a problem with it, but your mileage may vary.

Re: O’Reilly: Sorry, I just kind of lost track of that argument, but I get it now. And you’re grasping at straws. From an unofficial transcript I found here:
http://mensnewsdaily.com/2006/09/22/oreilly-factor-coerced-interrogations/
(I have no idea what the heck “mens news daily” is, so don’t hold that against me! It seems accurate, though.) What I think are the most relevant passages:

O: So in all 14 cases, coerced interrogation methods being debated in the SEnate right now were used and in all 14 cases according to your report they gave it up. Now, the opposition — you just heard it — Human Rights Watch, the ACLU, they say it’s garbage. They told them what they wanted to hear, it wasn’t truthful. Is that true?

R: That has happened in some cases, where the material that’s been given has not been accurate, has been essentially to stop the torture, in the case of KSM, the information was very valuable, particularly names and addresses of people who were involved with Al Qaeda in this country and in Europe, and one particular plot that would involve an airline attack on the tallest building in Los Angeles known as the library tower.

R: I do believe that.

You think the part I highlighted is outweighed by “they gave it up” and “Human Rights Watch, the ACLU, they say it’s garbage?” You’re dismissing this report with the laughable claim that it’s propaganda (you mischaracterized what O’Reilly said). You can say that “torture” gives bad intel and does more harm than good, but breaking up those plots is a pretty powerful counterpoint.

The case I presented excepted the party because he was not military and not in a state that had seceded. These guys were soldiers in a time of declared war.

I said a couple of times now, actually capture someone on a battlefield, fine, call them an enemy combatant. Pick up some poor sap changing planes in a US airport or abducted in Macedonia and you have a different picture. The legislation by many people’s opinion is unconstitutional. But in the meantime, Bush gets to wkeep on using tactics which violate the human rights of a variety of people.

If you can’t see the distinction between rounding up people all over the world on the flimsiest of charges and capturing German infiltrators during a declared war with Germany then you have a problem.

Even with two Bush appointees on the Supreme Court Bush was ruled out of line. And while the court said maybe you could so something if the legislature passes specific law, that is no guarantee this law is Constitutional.

I know people hear what they want to hear but how you could ignore the key thing I said about O’Reilly’s distortion is still curious.

Can I be more clear? I’ll try.

Ross said the torture techniques were [b]used on 14 top Al Qaeda operatives and “they all broke”.[/b]
O’Reilly repeated the torture techniques were used on 14 top Al Qaeda operatives [b]and they all gave up useful information.”[/b]

What is difference in those sentences? All 14 did not give up real information. Ross said some gave up bad information that led to wasted goose chases.

O’Reilly said the liberals say torture [b]NEVER[/b] works. This proved it does.
That’s a lie. Liberals do not say torture NEVER works. We say it yields more bad than good. O’Reilly sets up a straw man argument and then claims victory over it.

That is a common propaganda technique. O’Reilly distorted Ross’s version. If you can’t see it, look again.