FBI hero demonstrates he has more effective ways to make evildoers talk than the waterboard brigade could imagine. Like home-baked cookies.

For all those imbeciles who support torture of suspected terrorists – and they range from virtually every one of the imbeciles in the White House to (I’m embarrsed to admit it) that imbecile Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer – here’s a pie in your face. Or maybe a plateful of cookies.

In an interview on 60 minutes broadcast this last Sunday evening, an FBI interrogator showed the world and those nincompoops at the CIA how to get detailed, valuable intelligence out of top enemy tough guys without one yanked fingernail, one taser zap, one night in a freezing room, one night with rock ‘n roll blaring at an unbearable pitch – or one millisecond on a waterboard.

The interrogator, George Pirro, did it with politeness, a bit of fakery, a few kind words, pretending to show some warmth to Saddam, a package of baby wipes, and on Saddam’s birthday, a box of cookies baked by the interrogator's mother.

Yes, as we’ve crankily pointed out before here and here you can get people to talk with water torture or “enhanced interrogation” as the imbeciles call it, hoping the rest of us will be gulled into thinking that if you change the name, it isn't torture any more. The problem is, you can’t trust the talk. Torture victims, or "enhanced interrogation" victims, if you insist, often will say whatever you want them to say to make the torture stop.

Perhaps with less torture and more of the Pirro technique, we’d have Osma Bin Ladin in custody right now.

Or perhaps the Bush administration doesn’t want him in custody. Given the Bush administration’s insistence that torture works (and simultaneous denial that we torture anybody) one begins to wonder whether we don't have some evildoers right there in the White House. Not to mention the campaign trail.