I think we are missing the point when it comes to enhanced interrogation techniques. The controversy centers on whether the technique used is definable as torture? And, if it is defined as torture then doesn’t it reasonably follow that the “laws” or conventions governing the “fair play” of war lay fallow?  And, if that is true then, in an age of modern pharmaceuticals, wouldn’t interrogation under the influence of any number of tongue loosening drugs be far more effective and less strenuous?  Even morally preferable? If you have already decided that you will take whatever steps necessary to achieve your goals of intelligence gathering, and you have years to detain and question an enemy combatant, who chooses to torture?   Torture by every account is not very reliable.  A person under duress will tell you whatever they think you want to hear.  It is certainly detrimental to the morale of your own troops making it hard to feel like they serve a just cause.  And it provides motivational fodder to the enemy.   It certainly demoralizes the public and, when made public, erodes political support for the mission.  On the other hand, the United States military and our intelligence gathering agencies have access to every drug and psychotropic substance known to mankind.  If our leadership has decided that intelligence gathering in certain situations has such importance as to make any means acceptable, certainly the pharmaceutical route is easier and more reliable.  I have asked a couple of pharmacists I know and they tell me that there are any number of concoctions that make lying and resisting damn near impossible.  Furthermore, they make the experience impossible to remember.  GHB, GBL, Rohypnol and other drugs that are available on the street in the U.S. and often used as “date rape” drugs  provide rather clear evidence that if the conventions of war are not an issue the act of torture is only done for purposes of portraying an image.  It is perhaps done to frighten the enemy by instilling a sense that they are in for a no holds barred fight.  Perhaps it is done to make the front line combat troop feel that the folks back home will do whatever it takes to support their efforts. Or, maybe and more likely it is done to distract the public from the more serious but less stirring violations of conventional interrogation techniques.  If you can get the useful idiots up in arms over an interrogation technique that cannot even be universally defined as torture who is gonna notice when you slip Khalid Sheik Mohammed a mickey in his Gatorade?