In his last press conference, Obama, in his arrogant style, fabricated a Churchill quote to the effect that the English do not torture. Several people have tried to find the quote, to no avail because as far as experts about Churchill know, he never said it. The quote was silly in any event because it is well known that the British tortured people a lot more than the Bush Administration has been accused of. Particularly, the captured IRA terrorists were often treated very badly. Neo-neocon has done some research on the matter here. It strikes me that MI5's use of the threat of death against German spies was what I would define as torture. The fact that they executed 16 spies seems to me to have made the threat very credible. That tactic worked well against German spies, but I don't think it would have worked with Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, even if one of his comrades had been killed in front of him. Given his strong religious belief he would probably have been happy to have been made a martyr. It is juvenile to think that "good cop, bad cop" would have worked with him. I believe that these Democrat former interrogators I see on TV claiming they could have "broken" KSM without coercion are deceiving themselves. It reminds me of a former boxer I knew who was convinced he would have beaten boxing Heavyweight Champ Joe Louis if he could only have gotten a fight with him. He based this on a match he had with Billy Conn in which he was ahead on points when Conn knocked him out "with a lucky punch." Billy Conn later lost twice to Louis in closely contested matches. My friend was convinced that he would have beaten Louis, but in reality it was unlikely (particularly since he, like Conn, was a Light-Heavyweight rather than a true Heavyweight like Louis). Similarly, I see no reason to think the non-coercive interrogators would have gotten anything out of KSM. After all, the guys who did interrogate KSM didn't go to coercive tactics until they concluded that KSM was not going to provide any information.

The other really stupid thing that the Democrats (and RINO John McCain) are saying is that the information gained may be false. Will that is a shock. I wonder if it ever occurred to them that information obtained over tea might also be false, and, in fact, is even more likely to be false. It should be obvious to anyone that any intelligence information could be false. If these interrogators think that they can tell when someone is lying, they are really kidding themselves.