"Everyone's been created in the image and likeness of God," Capizzi stressed, and this teaching is much more than simply a "sweet" sentiment – it is immensely powerful when taken seriously.
"If we say that people are actually bearing the image and likeness of God, it means we have to respond to them in a way that is appropriate to the image and likeness of God," he said. Torture "requires a direct violation of the dignity of the person."
The Church teaches that to respect the dignity of other people, even prisoners or detainees, one must not treat them as instruments or tools for one's own goals.
"We can never treat people simply as a means to our ends, they are an end in themselves," Capizzi emphasized. "Torture always involves instrumentalizing somebody."
Raha Wala, senior counsel of defense and intelligence for Human Rights First, said he is not surprised that many Americans support the use of torture, given its depiction in media.
However, he told CNA, "It's important to listen to the experts, rather than the pundits."
"(T)he experts on this are clear that torture is ineffective: there are better ways to gather intelligence."
In the Human Rights First letter, the former interrogators – some of whom have interviewed top terror suspects for United States intelligence organizations – explained that the goal of interrogation is to build "a rapport" with a detainee and to understand him or her as a person. This approach encourages willing cooperation. It can reveal a detainee's life story which "can be incredibly useful for understanding terrorist organizations, and detecting and ultimately thwarting terrorist plots."
In contrast, they said, torture can provide less accurate and trustworthy information. In this way, it actually harms intelligence gathering and long-term work against terrorism and other national threats.
"If you talk to the professionals, they'll say that torture – causing pain and suffering to an individual – actually compromises their memory, disrupts their ability to recall information and transmit it accurately to the interrogator, and often causes them to provide false information if they think that's what the interrogator wants to hear," Wala elaborated.
The use of torture by American forces can also be a recruitment tool extremist organizations use in propaganda, the former interrogators said.
(Story continues below)
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"It is a hard truth, but we note that a large proportion of the fighters who opposed the U.S. in Iraq did so expressly as a result of the U.S. use of 'enhanced interrogation,' which the entire world recognizes as, quite simply, torture," said the interrogators' letter.
Wala said that he had heard similar explanations from former extremists. He noted that the Islamic State group is "reportedly dressing prisoners in orange jumpsuits, waterboarding them, as part of a propaganda effort."
"I think it's really important in the struggle against terrorism for the United States to as clearly and persuasively distinguish its actions from those of the terrorist groups that we are seeking to ultimately defeat," he commented.
Under current laws, the U.S. already has the guidelines available to do just that, Wala said.
"It's been clear for decades that torture is universally prohibited," he said. He noted international rules against torture in the Geneva Convention, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the United Nations Convention Against Torture. There are also federal laws banning the use of torture by U.S. forces that were passed with support from both political parties.
"Even then Congress came together after the abuses of Abu Ghraib, and passed legislation prohibiting cruel inhuman or degrading treatment," Wala added. A 2015 law limited interrogation to techniques listed in the Army Field Manual, "which explicitly prohibits waterboarding and other forms of abuse."