This has been dealt with before, but it's worth pointing out again that our use of torture techniques was gleaned from the SERE program, which simulates torture in order to train American soldiers in how to resist its use. Part of Jay Bybee's legal reasoning for the use of torture was in fact that American soldiers had been subjected to these methods in a limited setting.
It should be self-evident that the non-simulated use of simulated torture is torture. It wasn't, because after all, U.S. officials were trying to use torture, but torture is illegal, so they had to figure out some rather creative ways to explain why the non-simulated use of torture isn't torture. But the report also reiterates that the program was developed in part to resist torture techniques used by Chinese communists during the Korean War. More important, these techniques were meant to force false confessions, not to glean reliable intelligence from the victims.
Why would we want false confessions? Or at least, why would we be unconcerned with the reliability of such confessions? With the disclosure that the Bush administration was pressuring intelligence services to establish a link between al-Qaeda and Iraq, I think we have our answer.
-- A. Serwer
