Actually, several people have claimed that “torture” without exactly defining what it is, gets worse results than “normal interrogation techniques” and have claimed that “normal interrogation techniques” get better results.
I simply pointed out that if that were true then agencies that use “normal interrogation techniques” then FBI would have a higher success rate than the Gestapo at getting people to talk.
To your credit, you’re admitting they don’t and you then proceed to torpedo the argument that “normal interrogation techniques” are more effective than “torture” by saying the reason that the LAPD isn’t as effective is that they are “bound by rules of law”. In short, by your own admission, their “interviews” would be far more effective if they weren’t bound by the rule of law.
In fact, you’ll note that the only person who’s pointed to an example of “normal interrogation techniques” working was Mach Truck and he even admitted that A) there’s no evidence that the Luftwaffe interrogator he referred to in wikipedia was more successful than the Gestapo and B) that he used techniques that are illegal under the Army field manual(telling people if they didn’t give him the information he needed they’d be killed or tortured) and would be considered torture.
You’re asking an Iranian to prove that SAVAK was effective?
The answer is that everyone I’ve talked to who was “interviewed” by SAVAK members talked and gave the information the SAVAK members wanted to hear.
Is torture alway effective? No, thankfully not.
However, that hardly means it’s ineffective and you’ll notice that while some people have produced evidence to suggest that the Gestapo wasn’t as successful as some might have thought, no one has provided evidence that their American and British contemporaries got better results.
I don’t think anyone disputes that most people captured by them spilled their guts whereas few of the Germans captured by the British or the Americans did and please don’t try to bring up “Tin Ear” Stephens because what he did would certainly have been considered torture had it been done to American POWS.
I most certainly am not. I’m taking them at their word.
First of all, the only way you can argue that Scharff didn’t engage in torture was if you take the Jack Bauer line of thinking that lying to people and telling them they’ll be tortured or killed if they don’t talk isn’t torture.
Now, perhaps you think threatening Gitmo prisoners with being turned over to the ISI or the Egyptian Military if they don’t spill their guts isn’t torture, but I think it is and I’m pretty sure most human rights organizations do.
Secondly, the opponents of the Gestapo certainly thought they were effective and when push comes to shove everyone seems to admit that even if the Gestapo was less effective than some thought, that it was more effective than police agencies using “normal interrogation techniques”.
Now, people have been claiming that “torture” isn’t effective and that most “interrogators” claim that “normal interrogation techniques” are more effective, but that’s clearly not what countless intelligence agencies think and the same interrogators who claim that “torture doesn’t work” when pushed to describe what does work start describing “psychological pressure tactics” which would be considered torture by just about every human rights organization on the planet.
Finally, if you really think that it’s unfair to compare the Gestapo to the LAPD, ok, who talked at a greater rate, members of the SOE or the OSS captured by the Gestapo or members of the IRA captured by British military intelligence.
No, I simply said I wasn’t commenting on the Gestapo’s effectiveness. And I only said THAT in response to your mis-characterization of my post. As for point B, we don’t know exactly what Hans Scharff said other than the suggestion that his prisoners might be handed over to the Gestapo. I’ve indulged you in your speculation that he might have been more specific than that.
I started out thinking you might be arguing in good faith, but this is the second time you have rather fancifully re-interpreted things I’ve said. Please stop.
The motives of some in this thread are becoming rather murky to me. Seems like they would rather win a semantic battle more than anything else. Well, if it helps move people toward the position that we shouldn’t be treating others cruelly I’m happy to let them “win”.
Please. I’ve been arguing in good faith throughout this whole thread. It is you and others who have been (i) insisting I am making a claim I am not making, (ii) insisting that I provide a cite for that claim I’m not making, and (iii) insisting (repeatedly) that I ignore facts simply because I don’t agree with your opinion.
Also, I love how you don’t get on Lobohan’s ass for trolling when he just repeats himself without addressing anything I’ve said and makes broad and grandiose claims without providing cites for them, while I have maintained a consistent position and explained it ad nauseum to people who seem to willfully refuse to understand it.
Mack, when someone says, “If you don’t tell me what I want to hear, I’ll turn you over to the Gestapo” they are saying, “tell me what I want to know or I’ll have you tortured.”
In short, Scharff was behaving no differently than US interrogators telling suspects that they’d be turned over to the Saudi intelligence or the ISI if they didn’t talk.
There is a word for such behavior. Torture.
In short, the case of Scharff proves just how effective torture can be and how effective it can be to be part of a military with an organization like the Gestapo.
Let’s not try and argue that torture doesn’t work by redefining things that clearly are torture as “psychological pressure techniques” or to use the phrase used earlier “non-coercive methods.”
Please provide a cite for organizations that agree with your rather tortured definition of “torture”.
Please provide a cite for any of your claims so far in this thread.
You need a “Cite” to prove the British had a hard time getting captured IRA men to talk?
Well the phrase “common knowledge” comes to mind, but since you’re demandingit read Tim Pat Coogan’s The IRA. He’s written extensively about the Troubles.
it’s your claim that they agree with your definition of torture, so it is your responsibility to provide the cite. I believe that you know that such a cite doesn’t exist.
That is not what I asked a cite for, and you damn well know it. This cheap trick of yours is getting tedious.
No, absolutely not.
Again, I ask you to provide cites for your many claims in this thread.
Hell, try to provide a cite for at least one of your claims in this thread.
I don’t think he has a good one, I see that now Ibn Warraq is torturing logic by insisting that the quote dealing with the gestapo supports his position when it does not.
He also deftly avoided dealing with the reported pointing at scientific sources reporting that there is no good evidence supporting the levels of effectiveness that many supporters of water-boarding and other torture are attributing to it.
So then you think threatening to have people maimed or killed if they don’t talk isn’t torture?
Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch disagree.
Please explain why the US isn’t engaging in a form of torture when it threatens to turn people over to the ISI if they don’t give their American interrogators the information they want to hear.