…in order to get information from people arrested in connection with the September 11 events?
I read this in a (OK, left-wing) newspaper, and it really shocked me. It honestly said there are plans to do this because the guys in the cell don’t want to say anything.
Well, I’m certain outright torture, as in tying them to the racks and screaming “CONFESS!!” would violate several dozen international treaties and probably the Geneva Convention.
They may be trying to apply purely psychological torture.
The FBI is intelligent enough to know from History that torture rarely yields useful information.
The other day on NPR’s Talk Of The Nation radio show, an FBI guy was asked this. He said torture is worthless. First, because the victim will blither anything that comes into his mind and confess to anything, just to stop the pain. Second, the bad guys, once they know the prisoner is captured, assume their secrets are blown, and by the time you look for them, they’ll be gone. The FBI fellow said we learned this during the Vietnam war.
I wonder if we do, especially if frustration sets in.
Fibbie: “We need to know who did this. We need to know if there are any other plans afoot. We want to prevent this from happening again.”
Terrorist: “I want my lawyer!”
Fibbie: “Look, we don’t have time for this…”
So, how did he learn this in the Vietnam War? Most likely he got to watch some of the Vietnamese in action.
The word is that they were going to turn them over to the Saudis, who have no compunctions about flogging or other such indoor sports.
This may be a bunch of heresay and conjecture since I have no specific cite, but I do remember reading a book on intellegence gathering in the post cold-war era. Said that physically-intense torture, the kind that comes to most people’s mind, frequently backfires and is actually overkill. The best way to get intellegence from someone is to lock them in a constantly dark, concrete, room. Just leave them there for an undisclosed time, with no bed, toilet, anything except food and water. By the time you come to get him, the prisoner will be so disoriented and tired of living in his own filth that we will be willing to tell the truth. Tends to be more reliable since it lacks the urgency of intense torture.
Or I guess the FBi could do what frat boys have known all the time: Just get em drunk.
Torture is an effective method of producing real time info.
Imagine yourself and a couple of buddies who did something.
Imagine all of you are caught. And in the same room.
You all know pretty much the same thing.
Now your captors ask a question all of you know the answer to.
Your buddie says “I don’t know”
The interrogators gouge his eyes out and move on.
Next buddy gets asked the same question, he says “I dont know” They cut off his balls.
Your turn.
At which point, in order to save your eyes, nads, and other vital bits, you may spill the beans, or you may start babbling at random.
The problem is that there are some people who will say anything to make the pain stop, and some who will say the truth, and there’s no way to tell the difference. And there are some folks who really don’t know what the torturers want. And there really are a few who will die before they crack. The type of fanatic who goes on suicide missions, for instance.
Torture is not reliable - all information gained will have to be verified by old fashioned investigation.
Broomstick,
I can tell by what you say that you are either making it up as you go or quoting some stupid statistic you read somewhere.
Like I said before field intelegence is time sensitive.
Because of the nature of my job in the army I underwent POW training.
This training was by R.O.K. marines.
I still have a burn on my head from a 45 blank. (I smarted off)
Again info obtained a few says in advance might be of use. After that its just sadisim.
The torture that is mainly engaged in today is sleep deprivation of a split up group. The small amount of info gotten out of one is used to extract more out of the other.
Veryu bad example:
to prisoner 1 - What was your involvment in the crime?
answer P1 - I’ll never tell where the bomb is
to prisoner 2 - P1 told us about the bomb how do you disarm it?
answer P2 - F#%&en p1 he told you about the “whatever” building bomb then ask him how to disarm it
Back to P1 ahead to P3
This topic was discussed at some length in this thread in Great Debates.
Well, not having any on-the-job experience in these matters I’m having to go by written materials, yes. So you’ve had training - OK, that’s cool, and it probably taught you something. But you haven’t actually been tortured or tortured anyone else, have you?
I’m not going to say torture NEVER has a use, but it would be extremely rare. The guys the FBI swept up just after 9/11 were caught in a very broad net. SOME of these guys probably are totally innocent (in fact, some have been released because they’ve been found unconnected with the attacks) and torturing the innocent gets you nothing from an intelligence standpoint.
And, although rare, there really are some guys who just won’t crack no matter what you do. THAT’S been documented since the Middle Ages.
Certain things, like sleep deprivation, isolation, and a few other techniques will get the same results as physical torture. Is that torture? Some say yes, some say no.
And my other point still stands - because there’s no foolproof way to know what’s truth and what’s made up in information obtained by torture you’ll still have to do some investigative work to sort the facts from the fantasies.