The Senate Committee on Administrative Oversight and the Courts held hearings on the interrogation of detainees on May 13, 2009. They brought out many interesting pieces of information, but Senator Lindsey Graham’s touting of the achievements of methods that were instituted during what I’d call the modern Inquisition was, in my mind, a real baring of the motivations by right wingers.

He maintained triumphantly that ‘harsh interrogation’ had been used since the time of the Inquisition because it ‘works.’ In one sentence, Senator Graham equated what he called ‘harsh interrogation’ with torture, and showed what the torture was meant to produce.

The remarks occur almost at the end of a long hearing that included testimony by intelligence professional Ali Soufan, who had actually used effective traditional methods of interrogation that produced the usable information that was given by Abu Zubaydah. Soufan explained that torture is expected by the trained terrorist, and ‘plays into their handbook.’

The purposes of interrogation during the Inquisition, of course, were conversions to Catholicism by practicing Jews. As with the Gitmo torture, only by reducing a human being to the need to end the torment by any means, whatever the actual truth might be, could such a result be obtained. The resulting conversion was hardly an event of embracing  faith, but rather of giving in to the object of the Inquisition torture. So, with tortured confession, the statements produced cannot be used to establish facts, because no one under torture can be believed.

The end result of torture is not information. Therefore, torture is not used by actual intelligence agents, or for intelligence purposes. It can only be productive if torturer’s desire is a tortured version of facts. No one seeking real information would want to make the person in possession of the facts warp them to fit the torturer’s desired vision. The tortured detainee could well be innocent, but that would get in the way of the torturer’s intent, so it is never an issue.

Senator Graham knows that the Bush administration had lied, and wanted to erase the lies by producing confirmation of the underlying unreality. His identification of the administration of war’s criminal intent with the Inquisition was very appropriate. Facts are what they wanted very badly to eradicate.

Not incidentally, these tortured detainees were not terrorists, but suspects, and the use of torture prevents their ever being convicted even if any of them were guilty.

The function of the Dark Side inhabitants who are promoting torture is the usual fundraising from the right wing. Torture works for them.

For liars, torture works. It denies the truth.