This has had me wondering ever since the US military action in Afghanistan.
Supposedly, these Al Qaeda guys are combat-hardened zealots, devoted to the cause 'til death. Supposedly they would rather die than in any way help out the “infidels”.
So why do we hear so much in the news about the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay giving away “tips” about potential future terrorist attacks? What do they have to gain by this? I can’t believe they’re naive enough to give away information by bragging about these things. Do the interrogators “trick” them into revealing things, perhaps by playing head games? (whatever those would be.) That seems pretty unlikely to me (though I’ve never been interrogated so I don’t know how it works). Or are they offered concessions for information (e.g. time outside in the yard), however vague?
I’m assuming the US is not using any, erm, unconventional interrogation techniques on them. (Whether the US should or not is fodder for Great Debates.)
You’d be surprised how different techniques work on people. Some will provide extremely detailed intelligence without even being prodded. Others realize they have been duped, some sell out for special treatment.
I’ve read where the Red POW’s from Korea caused a lot of problems with negotiations, because they didn’t want to go back! China said they had to come home whether they wanted to or not. We had several brainwashed POW’s espousing the wonders of communism for a while as well.
In short, there’s dedication, and there’s DEDICATION. I would like to think that as a Marine ('way back in my youth), I could have kept my mouth shut if captured. BUT… these guys have the future to think about. Especially because we haven’t killed them. So I would think they’re trying to hedge their bets and improve their futures.
I understand what you’re saying, but in their position I’d be far less afraid of the treatment I’d get from the US government for clamming up, than I would be of what would be done to me by the other Al Qaeda guys if I gave information away and I were ever released.
…and there’s outright fanaticism. Like the OP, I wonder what’s happened to their much-vaunted zealotry.
Perhaps some of these guys are severely disillusioned. They lost their battle bigtime, they’ve been captured, reasonably well-treated, given medical treatment, etc. Maybe they’re feeling they were duped by the fundamentalists (especially the Western-born ones, and maybe those from middle class Saudi backgrounds) - a bit like ex-Scientology members.
Folks, a portion of that information is not coming from Guantanamo.
According to the Wall Street Journal, a significant amount of info is coming from Al Qaeda members who are being interrogated for us by…um…associates.
Associates in Egypt. Associates in Syria.
We are not there to watch. We don’t ask. We don’t want to know.
Here’s an article from the LA Times. Obviously, they’re not going to tell you everything. But according to the article, a lot of the prisoners are scared, disoriented, and motivated by self-interest. And I suspect that the Al Quaida propaganda works against them in this case, we’re the Great Satan, after all, and they know what they’d do to interrogate prisoners.
Another possibility is that some hardened prisoners are feeding false leads to the investigators to waste our time and resources or to distract us from real operations. How many of the “tips” have had some basis in reality? For others, it’s probably idle chatter overhead between Al-Qaeda members on various fantasies they’ve had for killing Westerners. “Hey, wouldn’t it be great if we could fly a small plane into a nuclear reactor? That would scare the bejeesus out of those infidels!”
Prisoners at Guantanamo ? There are no prisoners at Guantanamo, just “detainees”. If there were any prisoners of war at Guantanamo, they would have rights under the Geneva convention.
One of the simplest ways to get information out of a group is to separate them and then tell one that the others have spilled the beans. “Give us your info while it’s still valuable to you.” You see it all the time on those cop shows.
Squink - point taken on the terminology. Though didn’t Bush say at one point that even though they’re considered “illegal combattants” rather than POWs, they will be treated in accordance with the Geneva Convention? I’m guessing that would mean no sleep deprivation techniques.
Finagle - thanks for the LA Times article, very interesting reading.
miamouse - I’d like to think it’s that simple…perhaps given their isolation and dire situation they would fall for such a simple ploy.
How many of these national ‘alerts’, or whatever they’re called, have been made on information gleaned from prisoners at Gitmo? Quite a few, if I remember right. And with each one, nada, zilch (A good thing, actually).
It seems to me it’d be a good strategy for them to feed us bullshit right and left until it gets to the point that we ignore them. Then they come in with the wicked left hook.
As Doug pointed out, other countries don’t have similar qualms about using physical methods of information extraction. Prisoners know this. Is it not a valid, ostensibly legal threat to let the prisoners/ detainees know that if their information proves useless (i.e. we think you lied) or insufficient, we are going to ship them off to less prisoner-friendly countries?
I believe Al Franken said on the Conan O’Brien show … Sure, they’re willing to die for their beliefs, but are they willing to take a red hot crowbar in the ass? Are they willing to have their balls in a vice?
Funny how when POWs from your side are defected they’ve been brainwashed (well use of the term, by the by… it comes out of the Korean War), but when they defect to your side they simply “didn’t want to go back”. The history of this is fairly interesting. In the end, a number of defectors to the “reds” were allowed to remain on the other side.
One question I have is why do we even consider utilizing torture to gain this information? Not only are there a myraid of human rights issues, it really isn’t effective at all at getting anything mildly ACCURATE…
