Torture

I dont like it one bit.. but.. there is a place for it. it should be the absolute last step AND when you know they are guilty but you need that little bit more information to make the difference and save lifes.

Am i right in thinking the rule of Iraq was kept in place by constant torture and strong arm tactics? so haven't we reduced the amount of suffering?

On Friday Tony Blair will give evidence to the Chilcot enquiry. Would it be reasonable to suggest that rather than being questioned he be tortured? So that we can finally discover what happened in the run up to the Iraq war? Perhaps Lord Goldsmith should have been tortured today to find out if he really did, at the last minute, come to believe that the war would be legal even without a second UN resolution?
No, probably not. Even though they could end up confessing to waging a war of aggression which the UN considers to be the supreme crime; a war which has certainly led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, far far more than any terrorist has ever killed. One reason would be that torture is immoral; the other would be that very very few people can stand any amount of it before they confess to whatever they are told to confess to. It is unreliable and mostly useless. The examples of information extracted by torture that led directly to lives being saved are notable by their absence.
It was forms of torture that led to the false confessions from the Guidford 4 and many other innocent men and women; and that was in a fairly open and rigorous system like ours rather than the secret prisons and Gulags that the US and it's allies operate.
To speak of fingernails being 'liberated' is to stoop to the debased language of cruelty and arrogance that distinguished the remarks and world view of Rumsfeld, Cheney and the other neo-fascist neo-con mass murderers. It is the same complacent mendacity that brought us "collateral damage".
If you approve of torture I would set you the same test as I would for someone who supports the death penalty: no system is perfect and there are bound to be times when the wrong person is executed or tortured. Everyone accepts that. Are you willing to be one of those people? Is your belief in the need for torture so strong that you would accept that you might become a victim of it? Or are the 'mistakes' only for other people to bear? If you think a system of torture can save many lives would you be willing to see your parents, brothers, sisters, girlfriends or boyfriends tortured in error? Would you sacrifice your own child to it? Or, again, is that only for other people, people who have the misfortune to live in a war zone or in a country where terrorists do operate? People we never need see or know of, the invisible, discounted people that actually make up the majority of the worlds' population?