I agree with Derb. I wrote a column on this topic more than a year ago.

Money quotes:

An unpleasant issue that Americans need to begin to discuss: How far should interrogators go when questioning terrorists and terrorist suspects – those who flagrantly violate the rules of war and have therefore forfeited Geneva Convention protections? I’d argue that there is a line that shouldn’t be crossed … I’d argue that interrogators should not kill or maim suspects. They should not gouge out eyes or chop off fingers. They should not apply electrodes to suspects’ genitals. …
To elicit the maximum information … experts say, requires not torture but rather “coercion” — a sustained regimen of rewards and punishments that leads the subject to decide to cooperate. Experts say the subject must be made to feel that his interrogators are in absolute control of his life — that they alone are the key to all comfort and discomfort, pressure and relief, imprisonment and release.
For maximum effect, an uncooperative subject would be punished with isolation, sleep deprivation, cold or heat, monotony, the playing of annoying music. He might be forced to sit or stand in uncomfortable positions for long periods of time. He might be served only unappetizing foods.
But the same subject also would be rewarded for even small acts of cooperation, in order to establish psychological patterns that, over time, lead the subject to decide it is in his interest to reveal what he knows. …
Is that really beyond what Americans are prepared to stomach — even when we’re fighting an enemy whose ambition is to randomly massacre as many innocent civilians as possible?

The column is here.