ON TORTURE

The radio wingnuts, especially Hannity, have been defending America's use of torture in Fredo's war. They often use an extreme example, such as an imminent nuclear explosion, to make the point that torture is justifiable. Of course, one can't make a general approval of torture from an extreme situation but there's the further question of whether torture is effective.

I know we used torture in the Vietnam War but that wouldn't be a good example because we lost, so the ends could not justify the means. A better example would be the Algerian War, specifically, the Battle of Algiers. The best history of that war is A Savage War of Peace, by Alistair Horne, first published in 1977 and Horne concludes that the French won the Battle of Algiers by using torture on suspects:

How effective was torture?

There remains the vital question, with much relevance to today: did torture achieve in the Battle of Algiers? Putting aside any consideration of morality, was it even effective? Massu, with a courage that demands respect, claims that the end justified the means; the battle was won and a halt was brought to the F.L.N.-imposed terror and the indiscriminate killing and maiming of both European and Muslim civilians. He also notes that, when critics compared them to the Nazis, his paras practised neither extermination nor the taking of hostages. And Edward Behr, who could by no stretch of the imagination be regarded as an apostle of torture, nevertheless reckons "that without torture the F.L.N.'s terrorist network would never have been overcome.... The 'Battle of Algiers' could not have been won by General Massu without the use of torture." Had the Battle of Algiers indeed been lost by the French in 1957, then the whole of Algeria would almost certainly have been swamped by the F.L.N. — leading in all probability to a peace settlement several years earlier than was otherwise the case.
This is certainly true of the short term, but in the longer term — as the Nazis in the Second World War, and as almost every other power that has ever adopted torture as an instrument of policy, have discovered — it is a double-edged weapon. (pages 204-5, hardcover edition).

In the end, the French lost the war despite the brutality in Algiers, so we can at best say that torture may achieve a limited end but is not effective in the longer run.