Harry E. Soyster Quotes

While the notion that torture works has been glorified in television shows and movies, the simple truth is this: torture has never been an effective interrogation method.

… there are numerous examples of cases where relying on information obtained through torture has disastrous consequences. The reality is that use of torture produces inconsistent results that are an unreliable basis for action and policy. The overwhelming consensus of intelligence professionals is that torture produces unreliable information. And the overwhelming consensus of senior military leaders is that resort to torture is dishonorable. Use of such primitive methods actually puts our own troops and our nation at risk.

Legal issues aside, the American people and government should never abide the use of torture by our military or intelligence agencies. A decent society never accepts or justifies torture. It dehumanizes both torturer and victim, yet seldom produces reliable intelligence. Torture by rogue American troops or agents puts all Americans at risk, especially our rank-and-file soldiers stationed in dozens of dangerous places around the globe. God forbid terrorists take American soldiers or travelers hostage and torture them as some kind of sick retaliation for Abu Gharib.

There's just no doubt in my mind - under any set of rules - water boarding is torture.

Tainted evidence often comes from torture.

Torture is an extremely effective tool for getting people to talk. It is a terrible tool for getting people to tell the truth.

Congress has taken an action now that makes it absolutely improper and illegal to use waterboarding... or any other form of torture by our military and by our other departments and agencies.

Military people have a heavy investment in rules against torture, not only because we want to protect our own POWs from reciprocal brutalities … but also because war is so terrible that it desperately requires any limits anyone can agree on, any gesture toward dignity, any mitigation suggesting civilized scruple. There isn’t even persuasive evidence that torture makes its victims tell their secrets, instead of saying whatever we want to hear.

We don't torture people. Let me say that again to you. We don't torture people, OK.

I have personally led, witnessed, and supervised waterboarding of hundreds of people.

I would not restart, under any circumstances, an interrogation program at CIA.

Our waterboarding program is based on the U.S. military training program... tens of thousands of U.S. servicemen were waterboarded pursuant to this program to prepare them for the possibility of being captured someday so that they would know what it felt like.

Regrettably, it has become clear that torture of detainees in United States custody is not limited to Abu Ghraib or even Iraq. Since Abu Ghraib, there have been increasing reports of torture.

I've been water-boarded, and I speak from experience, and it's torture.

It’s not a pretty sight when you are waterboarding anybody … I am proud of the decisions I took including the destruction of the tapes …. We needed to come up with additional techniques that would convince the terrorists that their fate was in our hands … if the tapes were seen by anybody outside of the CIA, we would look terrible

The United States doesn't and can't condone torture. And I want to make very clear that that's the view and the policy of the administration, the policy of the president, and that he's made very clear to American personnel that we will not condone torture....Senator, under no circumstances should we or have we condoned torture.

There's been a lot of experience with torture in history. It doesn't work.

I am sorry that Mr. Cheney, and every other supporter of enhanced interrogation techniques, has to defend the practices as if they were torture. They are not.

I know from personal experience that the abuse of prisoners will produce more bad than good intelligence.

I saw the waterboarding device in Cambodia's notorious Tuol Sleng prison in Phnom Penh and did not see another until I was strapped down on an identical one at SERE. Waterboarding was administered as a 'stress demonstrator' to show that an enemy could make one say anything. And one does.

If the practice is torture for the al Qaeda operative who masterminded the killing of three thousand Americans, why weren't there court-martials in the cases of those thousands of servicemen similarly treated as part of their training?

Human-rights advocates, for example, claim that the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners is of a piece with President Bush's 2002 decision to deny al Qaeda and Taliban fighters the legal status of prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions.

I strongly disapprove of torture and have never and would never provide assistance in its process.

The photographs of Iraqi prisoners being subjected to degrading and humiliating treatment by their captors, and the reports of acts of sexual abuse, physical abuse, and other acts of maltreatment shock the conscience.

Torture is illegal, both in the U.S. and abroad. So - and that is true for the Bush administration and for any other administration.