The Washington Post today reported what everyone paying attention pretty much already knew, that coercive interrogation, including torture, produced a significant amount of useful information from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. The people with full access to all classified proceedings have been making that point for years.
Naturally this acknowledgement of reality has produced hysterical shrieks of outrage from leading terrorist rights supporters, like Andrew Sullivan and Glen Greenwald. According to Sullivan, by publishing this piece, which is pretty straightforward reporting, the Washington Post has now become part of the "hard right." That makes about as much sense as most of the other nonsense Sullivan spouts on a regular basis.
The evidence is overwhelming that extensive interrogation of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed produced a great deal of information, some of it good, and some bad. Given the amount of coercive interrogation employed on this particular terrorist leader, it would be pretty likely, even just based on nothing but odds, that some of the good information was produced by such methods.
The only people who deny that coercive interrogation or torture -- call it whatever you want -- produced some useful information, are those living in their own little fantasy world, where torture isn't allowed to work. Pretending that it doesn't is much easier than facing reality.
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