The only way to get information is to torture these days. There are other ways but torture is the most effective as it pushes the body to its limits so you have no other choice to tell who ever it is what ever it is you were hiding.
I agree sometimes the methods are a bit over the top and possibly not needed but there is nothing we can do about it... Let the government use their techniques!

Could be wrong but i coulda swore ranking military officers said not a single terrorist plot was discovered/stopped by information gathered by way of torture. In fact the bulk of those experienced with torture make it quite obvious that the victims will say whatever they believe the torturers want to hear meaning valuable resources are wasted investigating worthless confessions. Are not the lives of American soldiers endangered because intelligence resources are diverted from investigating legitimate information and leads to check out these false desperate attempts to confess meant only to stop the torture?
The people being tortured would have sworn Bin Laden was hiding at Disneyland if they believed it would have made the pain stop. You really believe such 'confessions' have any intelligence value?

I think William Munny from Unforgiven sums it up best, "We all got it coming." The fact is all sides of this argument are wrong. The torturers are wrong and the terrorists are wrong, both victimize innocents, neither are justified in their actions. We are in the midst of a war, and there are no real rules except in retrospect. We can judge the actions of another as right or wrong only based on our limited experience. There are some truths to behold here, hate begets hate, violence begets violence. No one holds any high ground here, so those of you condemning torture, you may think you are right, but your voice has no legitimacy until you suffer at the hands of terror, look that terrorist in the eye and have the strength to say I forgive you. You who support the torture of terrorist suspects you are a terrorist yourself.

The only way to be victorious in this war is to not perpetuate the cycle by ending it with our own actions whether that be by death at the hands of terrorists, or turning the other cheek. This is ultimately an evil world filled with evil people, no one should have any illusions to the contrary. Americans do evil things every day all over the world to all kinds of people including their own. People respond to evil with evil and this has gone on since the beginning of human history.

Is torture right? No! But the democratically elected leaders of our nation determined what was torture, and what wasn't. What was right and ethical and what wasn't. Were they wrong? Does it matter? Will it change anything? The offenses occurred and can not be taken back. If you paid taxes in the U.S. you supported this. If you think making an issue out of this will help anything, you are wrong. You'll just shift the focus of oppression to the previous oppressors,, you'll scream for blood, demand justice, and before you know it you will discover your champions and elected leaders are as guilty as the previous oppressors.

The answer is not to stand up and fight, but to roll over and serve. Take accountability for your offense of living in the U.S. or any other democratic and free nation, for it is your comfort and way of life that keeps the rest of the world down. Go to those parts of the world that you have wronged by being born into your culture and serve them.

Make no mistake, you can not solve this problem or bring peace on earth with your enlightened thinking, but you can do your part to not stoke this fire of evil with your own hate.