[muawiyah]

You missed the entire point on torture. You can be highminded or lowminded, following orders or disobeying orders, interpreting correctly or incorrectly interpreting the law, of whatever kind, and you will usually get what you want to hear from someone under torture.

That will delay your arrival at the truth.

Until we get some chemistry in place that guarantees truth-telling in all circumstances by all people, you and I are better off using trickery, incarceration, sensory deprivation, and food manipulation to gently "coerce" truthful answers from our prisoners, eh?!

[demecleze]

Certainly torture means any and all means for obtaining information.

I have never seen any data or publications regarding the use of torture, nor would I be likely to believe any that do exist as it does not seem that a researcher would have the option of judging torture highly effective. Nor do I think history covers these sorts of things with any accuracy. For instance, I know from a number of primary sources that German troops, especially SS troops were tortured very badly at the end of WWII, this is not spoken of generally.

So I guess I am speaking on the legality of torturing illegal combatants, not the effectiveness.