Obama releases Bush torture memos
- Thread starter Sankari
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Soldato
No comment about how I know so much about it, but the ones that are selcted for training all get the same training. It's been described as like doing the first year of medical school. You're permanently knackered and you come to think of your subjects as subjects.
Soldato
So you wouldn't expect to be raped? Of course you wouldn't. That's why they do it. It's not about what their norms are. It's about what will psychologically destroy you so you talk faster. You can beat a grown man for days and he'll just curl up in a ball when you walk away, but leave him with his own blood and someone else's semen leaking all down his leg and generally he's not looking forward to next time. Oh, and next time we're video taping it to send to his wife and kids. You'd be surprised what simple buttons can be pushed to get people to comply.
Man of Honour
Sauce?
Soldato
We're the countries teeming with randy bummers. Don't be so sure
Just think about it. Take the film Deliverance. What's it famous for? What's the one thing the Ned Beatty character doesn't want anyone to know about at the end of the film?
Abu Graib prison is another perfect example of a softening up zone. They just let a woman look at them naked. In that culture it was incredibly humiliating.
Guantanamo Bay? When the inmates first arrived they were kept naked and had earn clothing by being good. For being good, I think you can interpret that as co-operative.
99.9% of people don't need to be water-boarded or sent to Pakistan to be beaten and electro-shocked. Just the threat is generally good enough.
Soldato
The doctor who trains the interogators and passes the subjects fit for more interrogation. That's the sauce.
Interrogators can't operate without good medical support. You need to know when someone is about to die so you can stop killing them. And you need to get them patched up in between chats.
And then the medics also act as buddies to the subjects - "Look, you might want to tell them what they want to know - this time I stopped them before they did any permanent damage to your feet, but next time I might have to amputate them". Basically, the doctor is threatening to cut the subjects feet off, but it's played in such a way that the subject thinks the doctor is doing them a favour. There's even a joke about the "hypocritic" oath - "first do harm".
Soldato
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WJA: You've obviously done a fair bit of research/know people involved - how much useful information and how much 'information' is red herring stuff that the interogated subject thinks his interrogators want to hear? I was having a a long chat with a friend of mine who's doing his phD in law in the field and his view was it was abhorrent morally, but ultimately very useful from an intelligence point of view.
I know the Americans (and ourselves as well iIrc) have been led on very misleading wild-goose chases from dodgy intelliegence sources we placed too much belief in; I just wondered what your opinion was on how useful information from torture was...
I know the Americans (and ourselves as well iIrc) have been led on very misleading wild-goose chases from dodgy intelliegence sources we placed too much belief in; I just wondered what your opinion was on how useful information from torture was...
Soldato
I was about to compare you to platinum87, and post the obligatory comic. But then I realised someone had already posted it. And then I realised you are in fact platinum87.
Please come to the next motors meet.
Edit:
Also thanks for that video, I was expecting him to last quite a while, but I can see how he wanted it to stop. It would be interesting to have a go at it.
Guantanamo bay also has a "public" shower room. The shower block consists of glass walls and is surrounded by the main corridors the US army soldiers.
Haha okay Action Man
Soldato
Haha okay Action Man
I tried water boarding my action man, but he never coughed up. I was going to mutilate his genitals, but I think I got beaten to it.
Yep - he's one tough cookie indeed
Soldato
Sorry, but I really have no idea. As I understand it, it's not like in the movies where the investigators beat the subjects themselves. Intelligence is highly compartmentalised for obvious reasons. So people are apprehended by one resource or group of resources, passed on to interrogators, then the information obtained is passed to another resource or group of resources who then determine what to do with it. The biggest problem is establishing corroboration for things that a particular source might have supplied.
As an example;
Your source/asset tells you that someone is a traitor. You have no other evidence to support this fact, but on the precautionary principle you put that person under close surveillance.
You have, in your custody, a subject who may be able to corroborate the guilt of the person concerned. A crude torturer would simply apply pain and shout "Monkey PUzzle is your spy at HQ, isn't he?" until the subject, knowing it's not true, but also knowing the pain won't stop until they agree, says "Yes, Monkey Puzzle is our spy at HQ". At which point you go and take potentially inappropriate action against Monkey Puzzle, who is quite likely innocent, and just being set up, because your source/asset has been fed misinformation.
A skilled interrogator would build up a relationship with the subject over lots of cups of coffee/sweet tea and deep ideological discussions and start subtly asking about movements, where information was sourced. And you would do that with several subjects over long periods. It takes longer, doesn't involve hurting them at all (quite the opposite usually) and yields proper intelligence, which is what it's all about ultimately. Quite often the best stuff comes from people who have been held a long time, simnply because they are repeatedly told that the information they have is no longer useful because they have been out of the game so long. In fact, pinning together who the big players are and what they might do next is actually the best reason for keeping proper Al Qaida members at Guantanamo Bay, but you never hear that argument put forward unfortunately.
So the simple answer to your question, again, is that I don't know, but I suspect that almost everything extracted under torture is rubbish.
I don't have a problem with torture when used correctly as a last resort by skilled and intelligent people. Whether this is the case or not I don't know but I doubt the CIA just tortured some people for the hell of it. Beating someone up will lead to valueless information, but some select psychological tricks can be very effective. And there is always the good cop bad co, hopefully the suspect will pass inofrmation on to the good cop who he befriends over several months .
Torture is one of the mainstays of intelligence gathering and is conducted by pretty miuch ever country on the planet.
Torture is one of the mainstays of intelligence gathering and is conducted by pretty miuch ever country on the planet.
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Soldato
I wouldn't disagree. That doesn't make the intelligence gathered useful though.
I give you Saddam's weapons of mass destruction as a prime example.
One of Saddam's son-in-laws told US Intelligence that he believed Saddam was making WMDs. He's not really got anything except rumours he's heard around the palace, so he embellishes his story by talking about anthrax in milk tankers. It's 100% made up. All of it. It's preposterous, but the Intelligence Services exist to check this sort of thing out. It's their day-job.
You can imagine it now. Every tin-pot regime available, torturing away at anyone who falls into their grasp.
Torturer: "Saddam has WMDs hidden in Milk Tankers, doesn't he?"
Victim: "No"
PAIN FOLLOWS
Torturer: "Saddam has WMDs hidden in Milk Tankers, doesn't he?"
Victim: "Yes, hundred of Milk Tankers"
Now, they probably both know that's not true, but they both want to please someone...
Torturer: "Where are the WMDs hidden in Milk Tankers?"
Victim: "I don't know"
PAIN FOLLOWS
Torturer: "Where are the WMDs hidden in Milk Tankers?"
Victim: "In the desert, 100 miles south of Basra"
Torturer: "Now we're getting somewhere".
A REPORT IS WRITTEN
George Bush states on TV that Sadam has WMD hidden in milk tankers.
A Military Intelligence Analyst checks the report and spots the small flaw in the data that not only is there no desert 100 miles south of Basra, there's no Iraq, just the sea. In the meanwhile the torture victim, his usefulness gone, has been noisily strangled to death because bullets cost money and they make more mess.
In the meanwhile, an invasion has been launched because no-one wants to admit they gave the President a report with unverified nonsense in it.
OOOPSIE.
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