Of Course Torture Works

Silly rabbit; treating your captive as a guest may be more effective at actually getting, you know, intelligence, but that hardly means that it works as effectively at torture. You see, the misconception here is that torture is designed to elicit information. In fact, torture (in the contemporary American context) is designed to demonstrate masculinity and Will; to sort of those who are “serious” about protecting America from those who aren’t. Simply demonstrating that torture doesn’t produce good intelligence can’t reduce its political attractiveness, because after all eliciting information was never the point.

Torture: It sorts the real heroes from the girly men like nothing else.