Trump on waterboarding...

Donald Trump on waterboarding: ‘Torture works’

Back in the dark W years I maintained a blog called al Qaeda in Albuquerque.

Here are a couple of reposts from that blog:

"Quaestiones sunt fallaces et inefficaces"

"Quaestiones sunt fallaces et inefficaces"
["Torture is deceptive and ineffectual."]

Nicholas Eymerich, inquisitor general of the Inquisition of the Crown of Aragon; 1357-1360, 1366(?)-1381(?)]

Note: This guy was NOT a humanist! In fact, "[h]e was the first inquisitor to get around the Church's prohibition against torturing a subject twice by interpreting [the] directive very liberally, permitting a separate instance of torture for a separate charge of heresy."
[Wikipedia entry, Nicholas Eymerich]

Presumably after several years of trying to extract confessions under torture, he arrived at the now well-known conclusion:

"Torture is deceptive and ineffectual."

But wait! - There's more!

I can't believe my country is having this debate!
Here's another fun quotation:

She said "If I knew what to say I would say it. Oh Señor, I don't know what I have to say-- Oh! Oh! they are killing me--if they would tell me what--Oh, Señores! Oh, my heart!" Then she asked why they wished her to tell what she could not tell and cried repeatedly "O, miserable me" Then she said "Lord bear witness that they are killing me without my being able to confess." She was told that if she wished to tell the truth before the water was poured she should do so and discharge her conscience. She said that she could not speak and that she was a sinner. Then the linen toca was placed [in her throat] and she said "Take it away, I am strangling and am sick in the stomach." A jar of water was then poured down, after which she was told to tell the truth. She clamored for confession, saying that she was dying. She was told that the torture would be continued till she told the truth and was admonished to tell it, but though she was questioned repeatedly she remained silent. Then the inquisitor, seeing her exhausted by the torture, ordered it to be suspended.

('...a very moderate case of water-torture, carried only to a single jarra, administered in 1568 by the tribunal of Toledo to Elvira del Campo, accused of not eating pork and of putting on "clean linen on Saturdays. She admitted the acts but denied heretical intent and was tortured on intention." ')
[A History of the Inquisition of Spain, Volume 3, Henry Charles Lea, 1906/7]