Torture yields lies.

It's also repugnant, of course, but let's set that aside for just a little while: here's another look at actual results, care of the New York Times.

The Bush administration based a crucial prewar assertion about ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda on detailed statements made by a prisoner while in Egyptian custody who later said he had fabricated them to escape harsh treatment, according to current and former government officials.

The officials said the captive, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, provided his most specific and elaborate accounts about ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda only after he was secretly handed over to Egypt by the United States in January 2002, in a process known as rendition.

The new disclosure provides the first public evidence that bad intelligence on Iraq may have resulted partly from the administration's heavy reliance on third countries to carry out interrogations of Qaeda members and others detained as part of American counterterrorism efforts. The Bush administration used Mr. Libi's accounts as the basis for its prewar claims, now discredited, that ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda included training in explosives and chemical weapons.

Now, I'm sure the Bush administration would've been trying to conflate Iraq and al-Qaeda even without Mr. Libi's testimony - they moved merrily along with the game even though his account was considered suspect as early as February, 2002. Hell, just this week Vice President Cheney was out there alluding to links between the current Iraqi insurgency and September 11:

Some have suggested by liberating Iraq from Saddam Hussein we simply stirred up a hornet's nest. They overlook a fundamental fact: We were not in Iraq in September 2001 and the terrorists hit us anyway.

The man just loves his half-assed, manipulative conspiracy theories!

But it's certainly fair to say that taking Mr. Libi to the Egyptians for freestyle body-centric breaking-and-entering doesn't seem to have gotten us information that anyone would call trustworthy today. I'm not arguing that the man was an innocent, but the only way you could say his treatment did us any good is if you believe that American public opinion really needed to be won over with falsehoods.

The current mob in the White House may believe that, but I think most of us - regardless of our feelings about the war - would disagree.

And did I mention that torture was repugnant?