You can talk to us here, or you can talk to us in Guantanamo. It's your choice." These are the options presented to a terrorist by his interrogator in last week's episode of the hit show "24." A real life American official had this to say to the Dec. 26, 2002 issue of the Washington Post about the interrogation methods used on al Qaeda suspects: "If you don't violate someone's human rights some of the time, you probably aren't doing your job, I don't think we want to be promoting a view of zero tolerance on this. That was the whole problem for a long time with the CIA."

There are many objections to the use of torture during the interrogation of suspects; one of them is that torture does not work. This is not true. Under the right conditions of heat and pressure even the most hardened fanatic will develop a case of verbal diarrhea, yielding information that may save thousands of lives.

Recently, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the hairy and fiendish "Commander of Military Operations" for al Qaeda was captured in Pakistan. He was responsible for planning the attacks of Sept. 11 and the 1998 embassy bombing attacks in Kenya and Tanzania. He is a man with the blood of thousands on his hands. He is as guilty as sin and is a wolf in wolf's clothing. It is unlikely that his interrogators will be able to extract the information they need by stroking his furry belly and politely asking him to kiss and tell.

Torture is prescribed under international law, but the law is by no means consistent. Last week, U.S. army troops in Iraq killed seven Iraqi women and children after the van they were traveling in failed to stop at a checkpoint the soldiers were manning. U.S. Central Command reported that their actions were justified; "In light of recent terrorist attacks by the Iraqi regime, the soldiers exercised considerable restraint to avoid the unnecessary loss of life."

If the killing of seven women and children can be justified because it is necessary to preserve the lives of a small detachment of troops, is it not justifiable to extract, by torture if necessary, information from a mass murderer that could save thousands?

The U.S. does not accept this line of reasoning and will not torture suspects in its custody. "We don't kick the [expletive] out of them. We send them to other countries so they can kick the [expletive] out of them." This is according to another official quoted in the Washington Post article.

Egypt is one of the nations that have been subcontracted by the U.S. to conduct interrogations of suspected terrorists. It appears that Egypt has been honing its skills in this area for over two decades, and is not picky about who it uses for practice, if Amnesty International is to be believed.

"What happened to me was something I could never have imagined," Umm Hashim Abu al-Izz, a young actress, told Amnesty International. On Feb. 8, 2002 she was detained because her cab driver was stopped by the police and failed to produce all the required documents. She was taken together with the driver and another passenger to the Agouza Police Station in Cairo. When she protested at insults by a police officer she was severely beaten, with a belt, on her face and other parts of her body. Just days after the incident, she reported: "He took off his belt and began to beat me, on the side of my face. So I lost my balance and fell to the ground unconscious. Instead of leaving me he brought dirty water and poured it over me to revive me. He told me to stand so I did and then I found he was beating me with the belt again. Of course, he didn't stop until my mouth was bleeding and my eyes were messed up and my whole body was in a terrible state and I wasn't even able to get up off the ground. Then he kicked and punched me. He pointed his gun at me as if to kill me and he threatened to do so. He put the gun into my side and pulled the trigger but it turned out to be empty ... Because of the torture, because of all the metal bits in the belt, my whole head was swollen in a horrible way, my eyes and eyebrows as well, my teeth were affected, my chest was constricted so that I find it hard to breathe, I can't lie on my back in bed, all my body is affected. I can't do my job, my whole life's come to a halt."

There may be other reasons, of course, for handing suspects over to such regimes. According to some U.S. officials, foreign interrogators speak Arabic, have more "cultural affinity" with the suspects and can thus develop a "culture of intimacy" that U.S. interrogators cannot.

The information gathered through such methods has been instrumental in the capture of a number of high-level al Qaeda operatives and has doubtless thwarted several terrorist attacks. The long-term effects of this policy, however, are less clear.

During the Mau Mau revolt in colonial Kenya, the British used a variety of tactics to crush the freedom fighters. These included murder, torture, rape and castration. Within a few years the Mau Mau had been defeated on the battlefield. The British colonial mission; however, was predicated on the "3 C's"-Christianity, Civilization and Commerce. Their tactics exposed the moral bankruptcy of colonialism and Kenya gained its independence shortly afterwards.

So even as America wages war on the Evildoers and goes about spreading democracy in the Arab world, it would be nice if it avoided being complicit in torture. This is, quite frankly, a tactic that may win it some battles but will surely lose it the war.