Might just be fatigue. We chewed this subject up one side and down the other after the Al Qaeda incident.

My own preliminary conclusions, (after all this time they still need work):

--The word "torture" has been applied so broadly that it has been defined out of existence. It now covers anything from making a person uncomfortable or unhappy, to breaking his arms and legs.

--We are dealing with a group of people who tie explosives to themselves and walk into schoolyards. It's pretty hard to break them by threatening to take away their cigarettes, and in terms of publicity they have learned to play the Useful Idiots in our country like a fine violin (as seen by the deliberately-planned suicides in Guantanamo recently).

--The kind of lush treatment prisoners now get at places like Guantanamo would have dropped the jaws of any POW camp operator on any side in any previous war.

--There are psychological methods of working information out of people that have been successful. Experts in Islamic law have sometimes been able to talk terrorist fanatics into a different point of view, since when it comes down to it, real Islam does not condone the kind of things they do. If this can be improved upon, and shown to be successful in more cases, it would be better than hostile interrogation techniques. Converting an enemy into a willing ally is the ultimate success.

--It seems to be "common wisdom" now that torture never works to gain useful information. Seems odd that it has been used for thousands of years for that purpose.