GOP and torture?

[Thanas]

Does anybody know any sources in which the GOP defends torture or asserts it will work?

Note: If possible, they should be younger than 2008.

[Elfdart]

Does anybody know any sources in which the GOP defends torture or asserts it will work?

Note: If possible, they should be younger than 2008.

Do you mean the Republican Party? Or just Republican political figures?

I doubt the party itself officially endorsed torture -at least not yet. However, numerous Republitards have defended torture and claim (falsely) that it worked.

Dick Vader is the most obvious example, claiming that torture foiled several Al Qaeda plots.

Stephen C. Webster
Raw Story
Friday, May 8, 2009

Former Vice President Dick Cheney continued his excuses-for-torture tour today with an interview on a radio station in Fargo.

Perhaps needless to say, he’s not exactly praising the new administration.

From MSNBC:

“There are two documents in particular that I personally have read and know about that are still classified in that National Archives,” Cheney said. ”But I’ve asked that they be de-classified; I made that request over a month ago on March 31st. What those documents show is the success, especially of the interrogation program in terms of what it produced by way of intelligence that let us track down members of Al-Qaeda and disrupt their plans and plots to strike the United States. It’s all there in black and white…It demonstrates conclusively the worth of those programs. As I say, I’ve asked the administration to de-classify them and so far they have not.”

[...]

He warned that [an investigation] would have future consequences.

“Anybody who sees that kind of thing happen is going to pull their head in, and they’ll be reluctant to take responsibility for anything,” he said, adding, “I hear this talk that there is going to be some kind of foreign prosecution of our guys, I just think that’s abhorrent, and I think they ought to do everything they can to fight that.”

Of course, Cheney’s position that torture “works” has been completely discredited.

A Google news search for Dick Cheney also shows:

Former Vice President Dick Cheney has long maintained that the CIA's harshest interrogation tactics, which the U.S. now considers torture, prevented terrorist attacks and saved lives on President George W. Bush's watch after Sept. 11. He called on the Obama administration to release documents showing that success.

The documents, which are referenced in the Justice Department memos, say the interrogation program "has been a key reason why al-Qaida has failed to launch a spectacular attack in the West since 11 September 2001."

I'm sure there are others.

[The Jester]

The most recent one I've seen is this document. It seems to be completely devoid of any statistical information or independent peer review though.

[The Jester]

Scratch that. I took some time to read the document I just linked to--it actually has a number of conclusions which are decidedly against the use of torture.