Even without the moral and ethical problems of torture, there is a fact that many on the far right don't seem to grasp: information gained under duress is notoriously unreliable.

It also should be noted that false information can be just as dangerous as no information.

But don't bother telling this to people who think "24" is a documentary..

The effectiveness of tortue is (or should be) irrlevant to the issue of whether the U.S. should condone its use by our government and its agents. Torture is wrong.

"But what if some evil doer had information that could save your loved one's life (or the lives of millions) and the only way you could get the information out of him was to use torture."

This is a false scenario because it will never ocur in real life. But let's humor the 24 fans, and say that if you could prove all of those things (that the bad guy does in fact have information that will in fact save someone life and the only way you can in fact get the information is to use torture), then, and only then, should we worry about answering that question. Until that situation actually occurs, we should just stick with the "torture is wrong and to be used only by the kinds of people that Americans villify."