The last word on torture, hopefully

Sure, torture produces unreliable information because a person being tortured will tell the torturer anything to make the torture stop. And sure, torture is antithetical to everything that this country stands for, fans the flames of hatred and all but assures that our troops will suffer similar treatment. But do cookies make you feel as tough as torture does?

The practice of torturing suspected terrorists received fresh blows Friday after a magazine reported that a key al Qaeda suspect offered useful intelligence after receiving sugar-free cookies.

Ali Soufan, a former FBI interrogator, revealed in an article being released in June that Osama Bin Laden's bodyguard opened up about the 9/11 terror attacks only after being offered -- sugar free cookies.

Bin Laden lieutenant Abu Jandal is a diabetic, Soufan said, and wouldn't eat sugar cookies he'd been offered.

"Soufan noticed that he didn't touch any of the cookies that had been served with tea: 'He was a diabetic and couldn't eat anything with sugar in it,' Time's Bobby Ghosh wrote. "At their next meeting, the Americans brought him some sugar-free cookies, a gesture that took the edge off Abu Jandal's angry demeanor.

"We had showed him respect, and we had done this nice thing for him," Soufan told Ghosh. "So he started talking to us instead of giving us lectures."

Yet the torture fetishists out there will continue to support torturing detainees even though it doesn't work and even though there are more effective methods. Makes you wonder why they would do that, huh?