Originally published @ 4:50 pm, Fri 29th Oct 2010
MPs on BBC's Question Time were keen to condemn the use of torture for both moral reasons and because it doesn't work - people apparently will say anything under torture. A businessman on the panel tried to leave some room for doubt, sensing that torture doesn't work was an easy debating point rather than a matter of fact.
Now I was aware that for some time, the British had this view that torture didn't work, so all we did in the second world war was eavesdrop and engage in conversation (before the phenomenal code cracking systems kicked in). Said to be especially true of intelligence gathering during the Battle of Britain.
But only recently was there a documentary that said the results of this intelligence gathering was to find that German pilots still preferred their Messerschmitt 109 to the Spitfire. How dare they! Apparently the Luftwaffe pilots had worked out that the Spitfire and Hurricane's Merlin engines would cut out when entering a steep dive, was slightly slower and that 19 seconds of machine gun fire was poor compared to over 2 minutes' of cannon and machine gun.
As for torture's effectiveness, I was interested in this article in the Washington Post that says -
1. Torture did not work for the Gestapo; they got most of their information from public tips, informers and interagency co-operation;
2. Not everyone talks sooner or later under torture; official records of 750 then legal instances of torture in France during the middle ages found very few said anything significant; the Japanese during the second world war used torture for intimidation rather than interrogation.
3. People who will say anything under torture will include the innocent; which means investigators will be overwhelmed with information.
4. Most people cannot tell when someone is lying under torture; psychologists found that normal people have an accuracy rate of 57% - only a bit better than a toss of a coin; police officers tested had an accuracy rate between 45 percent and 65 percent.
5. You can't train people to resist torture cos nothing predicts the outcome of one's resistance to pain better than one's own personality. Against some personalities, nothing works; against others, practically anything does.
So now I know. And the moral argument remains. If we are fighting to demonstrate the value of free societies, the use of torture undermines our cause and either inspires others to oppose or to be more determined in their opposition.
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