Torture

There has been a lot of talk in the past few months about our government's use of torture to extract information vital to protecting our nation's security. I won't make any sort of political statements with regard to this particular administration or things that particular people have said with respect to this. But I will tell you some things about torture.

It's an effective means of finding out what you need to know fast. Those in academia who sit in leather-backed chairs on 60 Minutes and talk about how ineffective torture is have clearly never had their genitals exposed to an open flame before. This is not something I've done, or condone, but I've unfortunately seen it done, and I don't know of a quicker way to get a man to talk.

The problem arises when a large governing body makes torture a part of their policy, because large government bodies are very bad at making sensible policies. I don't know any of the people down at Guantanamo, nor do I know how many of them have information that would be pertinent to national security, but I do know that there's at least a few of them who were caught up in something larger than they understood, and don't have Thing One to offer the government in the way of information. And from the sound of it, these folks are being waterboarded.

As an agent, I am basically given carte blanche to complete my objectives, and if that includes blowing out a man's kneecap to do so, that's what I'm going to do. But my employers don't say things like "Torture everyone until you get what you need." I don't look forward to doing it, I don't enjoy doing it, I'm not sadistic about it (like some people who I won't talk about for now), and I expect to hear about it in the afterlife, but whoever ends up judging me will know that I did it as a last resort and did so to save more lives than I ruined.

But people that tell you it doesn't work? Naïve.