In Torture, a historical survey of torture and its legal underpinnings, Edward Peters devotes considerable attention to the revival of torture in the thirteenth century as a procedure available to the authorities in many circumstances. He writes (p. 49):
As police powers broadened, informal torture was used from the early thirteenth century on, but originally as a méthode policiere, and only much later assimilated into legal procedure. Citizens protested its use, at least against fellow citizens of good repute, but they approved it in the case of those generally of ill fame. Magistrates needed confessions and, as they found in the course of the thirteenth century, torture was often able to extract them.
I am struck by how contemporary the account sounds. Consider it with just a bit of updating:
As the "war on terror" broadened, informal torture was used from the early twenty-first century on, but originally as a méthode militaire, and only much later assimilated into legal procedure. Citizens protested its use, at least against fellow citizens of good repute, but they approved it in the case of those generally of ill fame (including Muslims). Intelligence officials needed information and, as they found in the course of the twenty-first century, torture was often able to extract it.
(Of course, information--and confessions--extracted by torture are not terribly reliable.)
The repudiation of official torture in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was one of the great achievements of the Enlightenment. Its embrace by France in the Algerian War and the United States in the "war on terror"--by the two states that were the first to embrace the Enlightenment’s view of the rights of man--has been an enormous blow to those of us who believe in Progress.
Why aren’t Americans outraged? Perhaps we need our own Henri Alleg.