Torture: Drive Thru Intelligence

We've spent some time here at the AntiCentenarian talking about how torture tends to produce terrible intelligence, even in its best forms [the opposite version of intelligence gathering, which deals with manipulating trust and a system of rewards RATHER than torture, tends to produce excellent, and reliable, intelligence]. Atrios has perhaps the most concise version of why torture, not in spite of this fallacy but because of this "feature" is a necessary component to The Administration's GWOT.

Think of it like a fast food meal- you're really hungry, you need sustenence. You know that if you spend some time and cook a meal all by yourself, it'll probably be better for you.

But... right over there, there's a McD's, and for like $3 bucks you can fill your gut. Who cares about long term colon cancer, obesity, bad-attitudes, when you're this hungry?

Likewise- The Administration needs intelligence. They need intelligence that supports their claims that Iraq has WMDs, and that it's been connected to Al Qaeda. It'd be great if they had intelligence that stated that it even had training grounds for terrorists within its borders. Now- we could send in investigators, spend lots of time and money doing actual intelligence work... OR. There's this dude: al-Libi. He was captured in Afghanistan, an al Qaeda guy. If we just... you know... coerce these things out of him...

In the end, it's the same as the fast food: you're less fulfilled, the nutritional value is atrocious, and there's long-term problems you can't even begin to justify.

Atrios:

A recent Times article pointed out that the methods for torture we used were taken adapted from tolitarian communist techniques valued not for their success in obtaining the truth but in their ability to obtain false confessions.

Apparently that wasn't really a bug, but a feature. The Times also recently pointed that even though the Bush administration was warned that one of the information sources, al Libi, was full of shit they kept on using his information to justify the war.

The Times article quoted a Defense Intelligence Report claiming that al-Libi "was intentionally misleading the debriefers" although this stretches the concept of "intentionally" somewhat.


You see, al-Libi was a fine graduate of our exciting new school of interrogation. On him we used torture techniques designed to encourage the subject to tell the interrogaters what they wanted to hear. And, miracle of miracles, he did indeed tell them what they wanted to hear.

...
Just to recap. Bush administration needs evidence to support their war. They use torture techniqes designed to extract false confessions to obtain that "evidence," which they then use to sell the war despite knowing full well of the lack of reliability of the information.

So. It's not a good idea to torture, right?

But this explains why Cheney's so hell-bent to maintain the practice- because it's going to keep producing those results he so vehemently cherishes- little gems of terrible intelligence masked as actual information he can use to walk all over the world.