One form of torture that should be illegal is listening to Republicans lie, about just about everything, but especially about the value of information obtained by torture. Personally, I would admit to killing my cat if it would make them stop.

Yea, Don't torture

Just kill them, that's so much better

Good riddance Bin Laden

Steve, sure you are employing a rhetorical device in suggesting the debate should be over now. Republicans will never accept this report, and you may have noticed that republican Senators refused to participate in the study.

This will never be over.

Ever.

The longer we go without charges being brought against Bush, Cheney and the others, the more likely it is that future Presidents can go through this same thing.

"No one is above the law."? Really President Obama? Then DO something instead of worry about marijuana clinics for medical use.

Gee, isn't there another picture of Cheney that makes him look like a reasonable human being? I mean, did he always look like he was jonsing for a hamster to bite its head off?

A few years ago, NYC police sodomized Haitian citizen Abner Louima with a bathroom plunger.

Today, all across America, similar plans are going forward- this time, with vaginal probes in pregnant women.

And here's what will happen: Republicans will say it's a Democratic report and therefore it can safely be ignored. It's what they do with economic studies -- even the CBO!!!! -- and it's what they do with climate change -- even peer-reviewed scientific journal articles!!!

Forget about it folks. There is no killing any zombie wingnut position. None. They ignore evidence, they ignore logic. It is not a debate; it is a war. Evidence and reason are given no respect by faith-based ideological people if it doesn't support their ideology.

Why does Dick Cheney advocate torture?

Agony-Pain-Revenge-Cruelty-Coercion-Bullying-Sadism-Malice-Savagery-Inhumanity-Mercilessness-Rancor-Insensitivity-Inflexibility-Bloodthirstiness-Persecution-Despotism-Diabolical-Degradation-Viciousness-Unscrupulous-Despicable-Predatory-Rapacious-Ignoble-Sordid-Vileness.

To name a few.

Bush & Chaney didn't get bin-Laudin because they tortured people so bad they would say anything then they wasted taxpayer money on doing the wrong thing as if they thought the prisoners were telling the truth.

Children and Pets are known to have been beaten, sometimes beaten until blood appears, bones are broken, and so forth That is known to change future behavior. It is hard to understand why prison inmates attack each other; that it somehow makes the prison experience better for them in the long run. State torture of terrorist prisoners as a few second sound bite is oversimplified unless more deeply contemplated and of course problematic for many reasons. In a compartmentalized set up such as Al Queda, how much would any single individual really know? However, we can be assured that the many third world countries that use torture (define what constitutes torture) currently, or unjust imprisonment such as if a hiker is found near a border, are not going to lighten up and actually talk to the person, share a pizza and work it out cordially. It seems there are still too many humans that in 2012, still see inflicting pain as a useful tool for affecting an outcome. Look how many beatings and violent attacks we see every hour in the streets of the United States. Where is the outcry? Instead we focus only on this. Let’s take this from intellectual to practical. Next time you are really mad at someone, and perhaps they are just as angry with you, do an experiment. See if you and the other would stand down and start over, or have a beer and chill out.

This report adds nothing new!

Torture is illegal under both U.S. and international law.
Torture is immoral under any and every recognized religion or religious belief.
Torture does not work and all of the experts stated this from the start.

That torture is and has been advocated by Americans is a statement of the perversity of our society.

I continue to maintain that any and all advocates of American torture of anyone in the name of expediency or 'defense' of America are also indirectly advocates of the usage of torture against American military personnel. Every argument that they have put forth for the usage of torture can be used by others as justification for the torture of Americans.

This, among a great many things, makes me sad for my country.

The reason why they want to argue that torture worked is because while enduring torture one of the inmates blathered something otherwise incoherent about there being a courier. They had already gathered information (through general intelligence means and non-torture means) about a courier working for OBL. They then took this string of words to be validation of the intelligence they had already gathered and then acted. This is not scientific, precise, or indeed good intelligence work.

I'll use an analogy:

Really bad detectives will- instead of looking for evidence to lead them to the killer- decide arbitrarily who is guilty (almost always a relative or someone else that you could summarize as being "most suspected") and then look for proof that the arbitrary person chosen is guilty. Often times what they will do is decide- again, arbitrarily- that the person's story doesn't make sense because they will allege that it changed during interview and instead make up a false counter-argument w/ little or no evidence to support it. They will then insist that they find the body of the person murdered. Once they find the body they will then go to prosecution- even though they will not insist on running finger print analysis, DNA analysis, or anything else to verify who actually murdered the individual. Detectives who do this (and again we're only talking about bad detectives here; good detectives don't engage in this kind've behavior) will insist on finding the body NOT because it will help them find evidence or help them verify their hypothesis about who is guilty, but because they believe that juries will not convict unless a body is found. And before you ask: these detectives will tell you everything I am telling you outright. It's a kind've sickening analysis of our criminal justice system. I studied this in criminal psychology and criminal prosecution in school.

Anyway: In this analogy the dead body would be the random blathering about a courier. They already had actionable intelligence, but they felt that it would not convince superiors unless they could tie it in to the torture techniques or otherwise to someone who had been detained (part of the politics here is that interrogators were under enormous pressure to find links between OBL and those who had been detained in order to give politicians and upper ranking civilian and military personnel justification for the detentions taking place in Cuba). Thus they used this one random string of verbiage as verifiable proof that, in fact, the information they had already gathered was true.

Basically the reason for torture is that sick sadists are in the position where they have access to the means to express their twisted minds. The Dick is a famous example. W is another. I've seen reports that in his youth, W enjoyed torturing small animals.

I don't understand why there is any discussion of torture leading to OBL when within six months of the Bush administration supposedly wanting to get OBL "dead or alive" was dropped for invading Iraq. If the administration had no interest in OBL, and they stated that they didn't, what information were they actually trying to torture out of those prisoners? I don't believe for an instant they were looking for OBL information, but I'm curious to know what they were REALLY looking for.

It doesn't matter whether it works or not, it is just wrong.