It's been argued many times that Trump has been able to surge because he's tapping into the fears of some (not all) white voters and some (not all) male voters -- voters who sense, correctly, that their invisible, unearned privileges are finally coming under interrogation.
In the face of repeated presidential assertions that inhumane treatment does not count as torture and that the president cannot be constrained when it comes to interrogation, the law expressly prohibits cruel interrogation techniques.
It says "much of the information in the recently released 9/11 Commission's report, on the planning and execution of the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, came from interrogation of detainees at Guantánamo and elsewhere".
Trump said Mattis had told him that, when it comes to interrogations, a pack of cigarettes and a couple of beers often achieved better results than torture.
Even President Obama's new director of national intelligence, Dennis C. Blair, wrote in a memorandum to his staff last week that "high value information came from interrogations in which these methods were used," an assertion left out when the memorandum was edited for public release.
Much of the background information on Jemaah Islamiyah that the United States and Australia used for declaring it a terrorist organization came from the interrogation by the Central Intelligence Agency of a Qaeda operative, Omar al-Faruq.
Mr. Thomas's first inkling that he has made a serious mistake comes during his interrogation, when he is stimulated with a cattle prod, then tapped lightly on the skull with a nightstick, just enough to make the point.
You write that "even President Obama's new director of national intelligence, Dennis C. Blair, wrote in a memorandum to his staff last week that 'high value information came from interrogations in which these methods were used.' " You add that former Vice President Dick Cheney has repeatedly said these methods worked, as have four consecutive C.I.A. directors.
So, until we have that information, which we don't even know if it came from interrogations or if it came from a source, then we really don't have a complete picture of how we got to bin Laden.
It was clear to them from the statement he made that he had been subjected to cruel and harsh interrogation, coming within the definition of torture.
