Because it makes them money

Why bother with torture? It's inhumane, it's unConstitutional, and it doesn't work- the data you get is notoriously unreliable and colored with the bias of the torturer.

Paul Krugman thinks it's because they can.

That's far too random and unprofitable a motive. MJS points to a better rationale.

Juan Cole calls it right:

The Bush administration has been about "the Greater Middle East" (including Central Asia). It has been about basing rights in those areas. It says it is fighting a "war on terror" that is unlike past wars and may go on for decades. It has been about rounding up and torturing large numbers of Iraqis, Afghans and others. This region has most of the world's proven oil and gas reserves.

Why is the Bush administration so attached to torturing people that it would pressure a supine Congress into raping the US constitution by explicitly permitting some torture techniques and abolishing habeas corpus for certain categories of prisoners...?

Boys and girls, it is because torture is what provides evidence for large important networks of terrorists where there aren't really any, or aren't very many, or aren't enough to justify 800 military bases and a $500 billion military budget...

Read it all for an explanation of the strategery that's as good as any I've read.

Lambert's comment:

"That torture elicits unreliable information is the point. It isn’t just the war crimes they want to hide, it’s the entire criminal enterprise.

Now, what was the point of having no reconstruction plan in Iraq? Chaos is the plan?"

Sometime the truth just reaches out and grabs you.

Juan Cole comments on his own post regarding the game of musical chairs that is the world powers jockeying for dwindling fossil fuel reserves:

"One way you make sure you don't get caught without a chair is to pull a gun on the other players and order them over into the corner while you sit on the chairs."

This observation is exactly right. This incidently is also why alternative energy development is so discouraged. Who would want to play a game of rigged musical chairs with a man holding a gun?

On the other hand, if alternative energy isn't developed until the men with the guns are in total control of it the game continues on.

He is also totally correct about the use of torture, which is not only inhumane but no way to really get accurate information on what is happening.

You can torture anyone into admitting anything, and the victims' statements provide a paper trail that the ruthless can use to justify or scapegoat anything they want.

It's not just a simple matter of torturing "because they can". It's a matter of torturing because they think they can profit from it.

Similarly, the chaos in Iraq is not a simple case of ineptitude. It serves a purpose for someone, or some ruthless group or groups of people. The carnage will continue until there is no more profit in it for them.



Or so says my Palantir.