It is unlikely that leaders of democratic countries, like President Bush, would authorize harsh practices and torture unless they believed such practices work. The judiciary of one democratic country, Israel, decided that the effectiveness issue was moot in light of the high cost of using questionable practices. In 1999, the Israeli Supreme Court issued an opinion that outlawed torture even in the “ticking time bomb” scenario (Judgment on the interrogation methods applied by the GSS, 1999). In that opinion, Justice Aharon Barak wrote that while a “democracy must sometimes fight with one hand tied behind its back, it none-the-less has the upper hand” (23). This decision was probably, in part, a response to sharp international criticism of Israel’s security agencies. It also likely reflected soul-searching on the part of Israeli political leaders that the value of information obtained by torture was not worth international opprobrium. There is a wide range of positions on the efficacy of torture. Greenberg (2006) reviews a number of positions from support to limited use to total ban. Debate about the use of torture still avoids or ignores threshold issues that should be of concern to social scientists and interrogators who operate in the field. These questions include: Does torture work? Do harsh interrogation methods extract reliable actionable intelligence that could not be obtained without it? Do the techniques currently authorized by the United States military and federal agencies succeed in producing accurate, actionable information? What do the experts in the field believe are the most effective methods for getting information? Is torture one of them?

The question of torture's efficacy may be hypothetically answered in a number of ways: it works; it does not work; it only works with specific personality types; only certain types of torture work. The use of what are called "harsh" techniques deepens the problem. To some, the term "harsh methods" is a euphemism for torture (e.g. Claude & Weston, 2005). To others, the term appears to describe practices that fall somewhere between torture and techniques formally authorized for use by the United States military and other federal agencies such as the FBI or the CIA. For example, Ross and Esposito (2005) wrote that the CIA exposed detainees to repeated listenings of "The Slim Shady" album by Eminem, which made many nervous and anxious. Is that torture?