let's kill the torture hypothesis

There is currently a perennial weed in American commentary that only torture can provide answers in a high pressure situation.

Today in the letters to the NYT:
"And what will be the reaction, when the answer is "we had the right people in custody, and for days tried to get the information, without causing the discomforts inherent in what is considered torture, but could not get the necessary information"?"

This argument needs to be eradicated.

Are there any historic examples of torture proving effective and efficient?

In my memory during the Spanish Inquisition victims eventually confessed to heresy after being tortured and were then executed. Apparently waterboarding was documented as a torture method used by the Inquisitors.

Or, say Cambodia--the killing fields were not about gathering intel were they? The torture was just a step on the way to death.

Or, the Gulags, the Concentration Camps, the 19th-century Australian prisons: what they did there--did anyone even hope for anything of value? The Japanese occupation of Singapore is known for the torture and deprivation they enforced--did it have any ultimate goal re: gaining information?

Can anyone provide factual examples of good intelligence provided through mistreatment and torture?

All of these situations, and the others I can think of, were simply people in power exerting that power in the harshest, most elementary, and cruelest way.  

People torture to express their power, to exert complete control, to diminish others, to cause pain, horrible pain.

It's not about intelligence. 24 is a TV show created by people who watch a lot of TV. It is not reality.

Interrogation on the other hand often involves creating a feeling of trust. This is the opposite of torture!

Please join me in consistently objecting to the torture hypothesis. Torture doesn't work. It dehumanizes everyone involved. It is truly the path to hell.