TORTURE | 2010-02-25
You notice all the water boarders were kids in uniform.
Reporters are always asking if people would use torture in questioning. If you watch the experts on that closely, their body language is impatience. The REASON reporters ask this is because torture is sexy topic. By contrast real professional interrogation is BORING.
But torture is not the question. Torture simply does not work. Torture, from the Inquisition to the Democratic Peace Loving Peoples' Republics, has always been used when you know what you want someone to say. It makes them say it.
Asking a pro about torture is like asking a jockey about carrying the horse.
To yield results, you want your subject caught quickly and BORED. Torture is a lot of things, but it isn't boring. A bored man will TALK. He will give you all those little reactions you need so badly. You can find reasons to talk about a list of towns, one by one. You can see the one that hits home, something is going on there.
You don't know WHAT, but you've got a WHERE. Then you need to think about it and orient your discussion accordingly, preferably days later. For the press, this is useless. As I said, a real description of that dramatic word Interrogation would lose readers fast.
As to whether one might be WILLING use torture, one thing I have never heard a Nam vet talk about was looking at a village after the Peace Loving Liberation Army got through with it. The media do NOT want to discuss that. All that kind of thing was done by the Nazis, and any discovery on that is publishable.
Stalin killed millions of people before and after the War, but during the War he never hurt a soul but the Enemy
I saw what the Anti-Racist Liberation Fighters did to people in Africa and South America, but none of that was ever discussed in the media or in the World Council of Churches, which supported them. But when terrorism hit New York, the whole thing changed.
I still wonder what the media's reaction would have been if it was their beloved Idealists who did 9-11. They devoted untold resources for decades to proving that Oswald, fellow Idealist, did not kill Kennedy.
Nobody discusses this Idealistic Communist theme of the media. A lot people were for torture after 9/11. I can't tell you my attitude because the question is thrilling but totally irrelevant. I cannot say I would not use torture to prevent what I saw happen. But the point is torture is useless.
As usual when the media take a topic up, it's just STUPID.
Anyone who knows instances where torture was useful are welcome to correct me. I never saw any hint of it myself, and it is totally out of synch with any interrogation technique I know about. We were trying to find out information. Torture is used to make people say what you WANT them to say.