Ephraim J. Witchwood said:
Except violent interrogation being torture isn't a fact of life.
No, it is a fact. The part you are free to
interpret is if torture is either useful or justified, and even this is a question the vast majority of people are unqualified to answer. That does not mean of course that these people cannot have an opinion, but simply that their opinion is informed by emotion rather than information.
During an interrogation of a person, the goal is to gain truthful and
useful information as quickly as possible. While I won't bother with a long lecture on the psychology at play (in part because there are far too many schools of thought on the subject to make it simple or brief), an interrogation is best seen as a struggle between two distinct parties: the interrogator and the prisoner. In general, the goals of the prisoner and the interrogator are diametrically opposed, but this is perhaps too simple a view. Basically the prisoner is faced with two choices: they can reveal the desired information, or they can keep it a secret. So long as the prisoner believes they have more to gain by keeping the information they have a secret, they will do so. The purpose of an interrogator then is to use any means at their disposal to ensure the prisoner believes giving the information is the better route.
The variables in play here but very generally an interrogator has the following tools at their disposal. They can attempt to convince the prisoner that they are a trusted friend. This is simply known as building a rapport and unfortunately this takes a fair amount of time to produce a result. You can deprive the prisoner of various things necessary to ensure logical decisions are made including sleep, food, comfort, human contact and so forth. The interrogator can use the threat of violence against the prisoner but this is only useful when the threat is perceived as credible. You can use similar threats against anything the prisoner holds dear (loved ones, comrades, personal dignity, etc) to similar effect. In general, the threat of action is a two step process. First, something of value must be identified and then the prisoner must believe the threat credible. If the prisoner only values a trinket stored in the deepest crater on the dark side of the moon as an (absurd) example, a threat to destroy this trinket would hardly be credible because the interrogator obviously does not have the means available to carry out their threat. The most obvious way to demonstrate a credible threat is to actually carry it out. A threat of violence carries no weight, but if one has already inflicted suffering on the prisoner the threat becomes immediate and real.
It is generally then the
threat of additional violence that is useful in an interrogation, not the violence itself that achieves something.
Of course, there is a problem with resorting to more extreme measures. When subjected to such things, prisoners will generally be willing to tell an interrogator
anything in order to save themselves. People might think themselves immune to such things but given enough time and effort anyone can be broken and pain is the quickest and surest route to this end. The trouble is then that just because one has gotten information does not mean it is accurate or truthful. There has been a debate that has raged for centuries now as to whether it is even
useful to try to speed along the interrogation process. For all the time one gains you earn a great deal of ambiguity in your information. The common modern consensus is that actually attempting to
break someone with torture in the process of interrogation is less useful than using gentler measures but even here you run into problems as there are plenty of acts that may or may not be torture depending upon perspective. Is leaving someone in a cold cell or in an uncomfortable space for extended periods torture? Is subjecting them to simulated drowning torture? Is keeping them awake for days on end torture? Such things are certainly gentler than subjecting the human form to the rack but the process is undoubtedly unpleasant.
Of course, that brings us back to the initial point. Does violent interrogation imply torture? Without any doubt whatsoever. When you specify that violence was involved in the process you ensure that we are not dealing with an ambiguous situation.
