[Steel Wolf]

Aggressive techniques produce inaccurate results when used by untrained personnel. The better trained the interrogator, the better results can be obtained. I'm not talking about thumbscrews and blowtorches, mind you, although the same principle applies there too.

If you threaten to feed someone into a wood chipper, they'll tell you all kinds of things. Maybe true, maybe not. Tactics like that are both barbaric and inaccurate. That's not what the CIA is looking for.

One problem with this debate is that "torture" is a loaded word. It can apply to -

1. Inflicting pain to gain information.

2. Inflicting pain for no reason whatsoever.

3. Inflicting pain as punishment or to terrorize others.

4. Depriving someone of sleep and then asking them questions in a rapid-fire manner.

If you're for any of the above, then you are for 'torture'. Incidentally, all of the above are used in survival training in SERE school for military personnel. We can't even do to terrorists what we do to service members during training.

[Doctor Stochastic]

You left out:

5. Inflicting pain for the pleasure of the spectators.