The only truth about torture is in our own morally bankrupt stance | Andrew Brown
Amnesty International report highlights how torture seldom works as a way to gain information, rather it leads to twisted testimony
Amnesty International has polled the British people and discovered that nearly a third of us think torture can sometimes be justified. Across the world, the figure is generally higher except in a couple of countries, most notably Spain and Argentina, which have within living memory passed from being military dictatorships which used torture routinely to democracies which don’t.
Yet there are also large majorities in almost all countries polled for bans on torture. It seems that it is one of those crimes which we believe should only be committed when we are certain to profit from it; that we believe works but should only be resorted to when all other means have failed. So it is worth examining why and when it works.
