Monday, April 6, 2009

Torture

Torture, we are told, is ineffective. The idea is that the accused will confess under torture but the innocent, strong in the truth, will have the nerve to resist. This might be true, or publicly defensible, in societies of honor but not in societies of physical gratification. But the idea breaks down because some people are beyond innocence and guilt; they just have pleanty of nerve, and this is not written on thier faces.
When it is not a matter of personal confessions the situation is different. Let us imagine we wish to squeeze information about our enemy from tight-lipped captives. Like the accused of the previous case some have nerve and some not. But here we do not care about confession. We want information which any of the captives might have equally. If some have nerves, others might not. Whatever information is culled can then be checked, and is only one aspect of an informational picture being drawn up from several sources.

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