Mancow Waterboarded

The unusual fact about the right winger "mancow", is that he is honest. He lasted only 12 seconds, I probably would, as well, but abu Zubayda and KSM lasted for over a hundred waterboardings. Food for thought. The video of mancow being waterboarded is interesting too.

JC

It's shameful that we waterboarded those three terrorists! We should buy them a condo in Miami, give them monthly checks and white women!

On Sat, 23 May 2009 06:46:37 -0400, the infamous "Buerste" scrawled the following:

What? Haven't you heard how much welfare recipients resent that? It's not nearly good enough for the elitist snobs. What else can we add to make it more fair to them? ;>

P.S: Finding 72 virgins for each of the three might be a chore.

-- "The latest documents released this week showed that priests with drug, alcohol and sexual abuse problems continued in the ministry as recently as two years ago. That doesn't sound like a church, it sounds like Congress with holy water." -Jay Leno

It certainly is, it showed that America had fallen to the same depths as our worst enemies.

Why couldn't we have just kept interrogating them with the FBI as we had been doing, which the FBI says was yielding results? Perhaps you are not aware, but the FBI and CIA both claim that the torture was not effective and only slowed down the process of getting good intel out of them.

The torture was introduced by contractors who had No experience with interrogation.

Not torturing is nothing like giving a condo in Miami.

I wonder if we fed them oatmeal 3 times a day if after a month or so, a big mac might have got them to fess up? Oh hell, we did that, at least the fast food bribes.

Wes

-- "Additionally as a security officer, I carry a gun to protect government officials but my life isn't worth protecting at home in their eyes." Dick Anthony Heller

big mac might have

By the way, the Israelis are reputed to be the best at getting information out of people, and they don't use torture. Want to guess what they have found works best to get people to give them the information they want from them? It really makes sense too. The Israelis have found that providing sex and money work great at getting what they want out of just about everyone. Those Jews are smart. Been doing this kind of thing for a long time too so they know what really works. Torture just makes people say anything to make it stop, which is why it's not reliable. If we didn't have such fools in power we would have never used it and we would have gotten just as good information as we did by using it.

Hawke

Any reports on what info they gave relative to how many times they were waterboarded?

Dave

Based on what I read in the news, which may or may not be true, they did not give any info despite being waterboarded over 100 times. There is two explanations why, one is that by the time they were waterboarded, they already shared everything that they knew, and another is that they kept their secrets despite being waterboarded. The former is somewhat more likely, in my opinion.

snipped-for-privacy@green.rahul.net (Edward A. Falk) wrote in rec.crafts.metalworking:

That you're a Liberal.

Ignoring the rest of this post I wonder whether there is a valid reference for that statement.

Obviously, as torture has existed throughout recorded history - the Romans even had some laws that concerned the subject - it seems to have produced some sort of evidence that it was a viable solution to a problem.

After all the Russians seemed to be able to get individuals to make statements that doomed that individual to death. There are many many stories about old time police "beating confessions out of people".

So, if you can get people to make a confession that incarcerates or dooms them it should be equally as possible to get that individual to tell the truth.

As no intelligent interrogator actually believes anything that is said during an interrogation unless it is backed up by collaborating evidence if the above thesis is correct it means that all of the individuals questioned told the same lie.

After all, if you torture a guy and he tells you that "my guys are waiting by the river to ambush you" and so you go the other way and the bad guys ambush you it seems like you might get a glimmer that this technique wasn't working.

I suggest that it does work and leaves it up to the interrogator to sort out the truth from the lies - just as any interrogation technique does.

Cheers,

John B. (jbslocombatgmaildotcom)

As far as I know. most such confessions were produced by sleep deprivation. Other forms of torture were also used, but sleep deprivation worked very reliably.

I consider sleep deprivation torture, as it induces unbearable suffering and can lead to death.

In any case, sleep deprivation and other forms of torture could make most normal people confess to anything that interrogators would desire. The issue is, 1) that it is much harder to obtain reliable information from tortured subjects, as opposed to "any confession", and 2) that no court would admit evidence obtained under torture, so any action against tortured people would need to be done extralegally.

This is hard to tell with any certainty until you tortured a number of motivated people. Any truth on this would be difficult to come by.

I can only comment that at the end of the Korean war I was in Japan and one of our crews was returned to the Squadron after they were liberated. The Squadron held a sort of "welcome home" thing where the crew told the Squadron about being captured and being prisoners. The Aircraft commander stated that after they had dragged him out and beat him for some time he "told them what they wanted to know".

Subsequent conversation with one of the enlisted crew members revealed that they literally dragged the A.C. out and beat and kicked him into unconsciousness day after day.... until he talked.

I think that it would work.

Cheers,

John B. (jbslocombatgmaildotcom)

So, he told them what they wanted to know. But did he tell them the truth?

The question never arose. The A.C. said pretty much what I wrote and nobody commented. At the time I assumed that he had told them the truth.

I'm not sure that anyone can withstand being interrogated in a prison camp run by people that you know don't really care whether they kill you or not. The poor diet, lack of rest, generally lousy physical condition and constant beatings will (I'm sure) result in you telling them what they want to know.

Cheers,

John B. (jbslocombatgmaildotcom)

I think what's missing from the debate is that justice and intelligence have different objectives.

Justice needs testimony that will stand up in court, at least in the West, and there is ample history showing you can get people to confess to almost anything if you beat them badly enough, so coerced confessions have dubious value. Unless the intent is to punish the person regardless. But then the intent isn't justice.

Intelligence needs leads, leads that will be checked out and verified, and it really doesn't matter if those leads are 1% of the desperate blather coming from the suspect. Nor does it matter if these leads are hearsay or worse. And, one can go back to the suspect and throw the failed leads in his face, and tell him that he must do better, etc, until he has been squeezed dry. The point is to understand a secret organization, and to frustrate its goals and operations.

Joe Gwinn

No, you'll tell them what they want to HEAR, to get them to stop, which may be very different from what they want to know. And THAT is the problem with with information gained from tortured prisoners.

So, how long were YOU tortured?

When did I ever claim to have been tortured? What I meant was that it makes sense that a person being tortured, in order to make it stop, would tell the torturer what said torturer wanted to hear in order stop. If someone is beating me over the head telling me he'll stop if I tell him the moon is made of green cheese, I'm not going to give him a dissertation on the composition of moon rocks. .