Breathtaking

Alan Dershowitz defends torture on the Wall Street Journal's editorial page by noting it worked well for the Nazis:

There are some who claim that torture is a nonissue because it never works--it only produces false information. This is simply not true, as evidenced by the many decent members of the French Resistance who, under Nazi torture, disclosed the locations of their closest friends and relatives.

I guess we're done here, then. First the US should be the Soviet Union, now the US should be Nazi Germany. Anyone got any ideas for lower levels to which the pro-torture party can sink?

By the way, the argument is, of course, based a lie. Amusingly, the "ticking time bomb" example he proceeds to use to support his scenario is also based on a premise which is a lie; it didn't actually involve - he even admits - the use of torture. But he uses it to support a pro-torture position anyway, because truth is irrelevant, and if you want to support a lie, you may as well use another lie.

This highlights the fundamental reality, and the actual point that he's lying about: torture produces whatever you want to hear. It can be truth; it can be falsehood. Truth is orthogonal to the process, and torture states always, always, always go from professing the desire for the former to extracting only the latter. Always.