To torture or not to torture?

While writing the previous post, I found this article by Vladimir Bukovsky:

So, why would democratically elected leaders of the United States ever want to legalize what a succession of Russian monarchs strove to abolish? Why run the risk of unleashing a fury that even Stalin had problems controlling? Why would anyone try to "improve intelligence-gathering capability" by destroying what was left of it? Frustration? Ineptitude? Ignorance? Or, has their friendship with a certain former KGB lieutenant colonel, V. Putin, rubbed off on the American leaders? I have no answer to these questions, but I do know that if Vice President Cheney is right and that some "cruel, inhumane or degrading" (CID) treatment of captives is a necessary tool for winning the war on terrorism, then the war is lost already.

Mr. Bukovsky raises a number of very good points in his article, but he misses one: unlike Stalin's "interrogators", our anti-terrorist operatives are looking for some real information, not false "confessions". I would imagine that they would know how to get the real stuff, as opposed to what their prisoners might think they want to hear. Mind games are necessary for interrogations. I don't think real torture is productive tool for getting information. I also think that our operatives know that too.