Rats can chew without swallowing. They do it all the time. What, did you think they ate their way into your house? No. They just gnaw.
The main flaw in the OP is the idea that torture ever works. It is as easy to lie when being tortured as to tell the truth. People don’t torture because they’re interested in the truth, they torture because they’re bastards.
I remember reading about this in some horror novel when I was about 11. The bowl was copper, strapped to the belly, and the villain put a red hot coal on the bowl. I think the bad guy might’ve been Asian or described the torture as Chinese.
You know, while torture is not useful, the reasoning you give here is simply wrong.
In the first place, it’s NOT easy to make up a lie while you’re in intense pain. It’s difficult to even think. And when that pain is being deliberately inflicted upon you, your impulse will be to do whatever it takes to stop it from continuing, to keep it from resuming, and to please your torturer. The problem with torture (apart from its immorality) is its use as an interrogation technique. If the victim does not posssess the knowledge the torturer covets, he will make it up.
Also, I seriously doubt anyone is tortured while they are answering questions. Questions may be asked while the pain is being inflicted, but the torturer will pause the infliction while the victim answers, if only because it’s difficult to talk and scream simultaneously. In such a situation as the OP describes, a victim who knows the correct answer to the questions is most likely to share them–the best way to stop the pain from resuming. But if the truth will not serve to stop the torture, or if the victim does not know the truth, he’s most likely to say whatever he thinks will at least postpone the pain.
I’ve always found it easy to lie to bastards, and have no interest in pleasing them.
Every skilled interrogator knows that torture does not work. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was water-boarded 183 times precisely because it was so ineffective.
Did I mention that this is from a movie where they used neon race cars to traffic drugs incognito? It’s not like they were using logic or anything.
I’m sorry, gaffa, but this strikes me as extremely naive. Anyone who has simply been beaten up by a determined foe or foes knows that pain will inevitably compel a demanded action. If most people were capable of resisting even threatened pain and death, there would be far fewer rapes and robberies. Nor would we have false confessions to crimes obtained by coercion.
You seem to be misunderstanding my point. I will assume that such misunderstanding is inadvertent rather than disingenuous.
Torture does not work in the sense that it does not produce reliable intelligence that could not be more efficiently garnered by other means. Because most people will do anything to stop or at least delay extreme pain, any information they give is necessarily and must be verified by other, non-torture means. In that sense torture is a waste of time.
Torture works very well when the torturer’s ambition is to force the victim to perform a given action, particularly when the torturer is sufficiently ruthless and the action to be performed may be immediately verified. If you’re a captured insurrectionist and I’m trying to get you the name the other members of your cell, torture is a waste fo time because I have to verify the information you give me by other means no matter what, and if you do not know the names of your cohorts anyway, you’ll give your neighbor’s name just to make the pain stop. Buf if I just want you to sign a confession in front of me, you’ll do that once I’ve broken all the fingers on your left hand.
To your example: a major problem with waterboarding (again, in addition to its fundamental immorality) is that if the victim makes it through the first session without breaking, he will come to understand that those waterboarding him do not intend to torment him unto death or even permanent, debilitating injury; that is, they have exposed the weakness of their hand. The victim thus is given hope, which assists him in in additional sessions.
And I submit that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was extraordinary in his will and resistance. The majority of the population – much more than 99% – will no more be able to match his feat than they are able to run a mile in under four minutes. Just as such an athletic feat is simply impossible for most of us, regardless of what we fantasize about in our easy chairs or boast of online, resisting systematic, severe infliction of pain is beyond most of us.
Looking back, I see that yes, you did mention it.
As you yourself said, the act of torture had the opposite effect of the one desired.
Watch the other Jack Cloonan videos where he discusses getting terrorists to cooperate.
I’m not watching videos where I am, sorry.
It’s beside the point anyway. If I read you aright, you are contending that torture is useless: that it either never or almost never works. My contention was that torture is of so limited use as an investigational tool that it it should be abandoned, but that as a means of compelling immediately verifiable action it works more often than not, particularly if the torturer is clearly ruthless and willing to inflict damage or death.
I’ve seen this torture plot, including heating the cage, used in other movies. Definitely not Fast and Furious as I’ve never sat through more than 5 minutes of any of the franchise. As I’ve never had opportunity, on either end, to try this; I don’t know if it would work for sure, but it looks plausible. Maybe someone should submit it to MythBusters.
The rat only needs to gnaw through the skin and muscle at the front - which will be variable, based on age, sex, and physical condition of the human, but will, barring a particularly fat subject, not be much past the rat’s shoulders. Then they squirm through the viscera, and begin again on the other side. Or, they could gnaw through about the equivalent of their body length, and dig a tunnel all in the front surface of the human’s stomach. But that I think is beyond a rat’s problem solving abilities.
Of course, that’s not actually answering ‘would the rat try’, but rather, ‘could it succeed’, which is a completely different question. The answer to that one is ‘maybe, if it starts with the right angle of attack, and the person’s not too fat, and it doesn’t take a wrong turn once it’s in the abdominal cavity’. The answer to the first, however is ‘does a gnawing, burrowing creature try to gnaw and burrow through the nearest surface that it’s able to cut, when it’s in danger? Of COURSE it does!’