The Washington Post's intelligence and national security reporting team make the case that, in the case of 9/11 planner KSM, enhanced interrogation techniques -- EITs --or torture -- facilitated his cooperation with the CIA.  The story has produce a violent reaction among supporters and opponents of using the practice, with supporters crowing and opponents accusing the Post of letting Dick Cheney man their editing desk.

Well, we know that whether torture worked should not effect the moral case for or against it, but in the mind of the public, which seems to look at the practice through the "24" ticking-time-bomb lens, its effectiveness does seem to be related to its appropriateness in extreme situations where lives are at stake. Given this distortion -- most every instance of torture did not take place with a threshold-level "24" scenario in the offing -- it is quite comprehensible why proponents and opponents of torture are so invested in proving that it never works, or that it almost always works.