Some people say torture doesn’t work. I do not know whether it does or not. … The reality is the effect it has on you. When you become the torturer, something happens to that force … it has a corrosive effect over time. You move down a path that is difficult to come back from.
There is torture of mind as well as body; the will is as much affected by fear as by force. And there comes a point where this Court should not be ignorant as judges of what we know as men.
I know from personal experience that the abuse of prisoners will produce more bad than good intelligence.
Torture can destroy the social fabric of communities, degrade a society's institutions, and undermine the integrity of its political systems.
No information that we could ever obtain by torture and inhumane methods could ever balance the damage that such practices would cause us.
Torture is how you create enemies, not how you defeat them... Torture is how you get bad information, not good intelligence. Torture is how you set back America's standing in the world, not how you strengthen it.
… 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.
The United States is now relearning an ancient lesson, dating back to the Roman Empire. Brutalizing an enemy only serves to brutalize the army ordered to do it. Torture corrodes the mind of the torturer.
