Bush: Don't Say You Were Not Warned

In 2002, the Joint Personnel Recovery Agency (the people that ran the SERE training) sent a memo to the Pentagon's chief lawyer about the effectiveness of torture:

Conceptually, proponents [of torture] envision the application of torture as a means to expedite the exploitation process. In essence, physical and/or psychological duress are viewed as an alternative to the more time-consuming conventional interrogation process. The error inherent in this line of thinking is the assumption that, through torture, the interrogator can extract reliable and accurate intelligence. History and a consideration of human behavior would appear to refute this assumption.

Note also that the memo stated that if the US uses torture, that will be seen by the rest of the world as license to torture Americans.