Also, haven’t we beaten people to death? If that isn’t torture, what is?

So I’m no more an expert on the matter of interrogation than you are Timmah. Sidhe thinks I’m a Bush apologist on this matter (though Bush himself is now playing by McCain’s rules), and he also thinks I’m pro-torture. With all due respect to the man who refuses to show me my due respect, nothing could be further from the truth. Just as a person, (putting my day job profession) on the back burner for the moment, I’d have to say that any methods that produce lasting psychological and/or physical damage should be avoided at all costs. PTSD, for example is something you wouldn’t want to wish upon your worst enemy, and some of these prisoners most definately fall into the category of our own worst enemies. Still, we supposedly live in a civilized nation, so there must be certain safegaurds put in place so that we can fight terrorism and excercize a modicum of civility and humaneness in the process.

I hope that answers your question.

I’m merely an interested amateur in the subject- I’ve read my fair share of books about the CIA’s history and procedure, and am giving a fair bit of thought to applying once I get my masters (they are quite interested in Middle East specialists, which is my current area of interest and study), though that time is a while off yet.

There was a really good article in The Atlantic about interrogation techniques and why torture and abuse don’t work. Everyone that supports this shit always brings up the 24 ticking time bomb scenario, but getting violent with a prisoner does not assure that you will be any closer to the truth. The prisoner is more likely to say what he thinks the interregator wants to hear to get the abuse to stop.

One of the most feared torture techniques in N. Korea is called “The clock”. You are forced to stand with your arms out and swing your leg as a pendulum. Nobody is getting hurt at all! As a matter of fact, the excercise is probably doing them good! Now try this for a few hours and tell me that forcing someone to do that isn’t torturing them.

I think you are also giving serious short-shrift to sleep depravation.

In the head of the interrogated prisoner a haze begins to form. His spirit is wearied to death, his legs are unsteady, and he has one sole desire: to sleep, to sleep just a little, not to get up, to lie, to rest, to forget….Anyone who has experienced this desire knows that not even hunger or thirst are comparable with it?I came across prisoners who signed what they were ordered to sign, only to get what the interrogator promised them. He did not promise them their liberty. He promised them?if they signed?uninterrupted sleep! And they signed….And having signed, there was nothing in the world that could move them to risk again such nights and such days….The main thing was?to sleep. (Menachem Begin, White Nights: The Story of a Prisoner in Russia, trans. Kafie Kaplan (Jerusalem: Steimatzky, 1977))

The American “military advisors” would stand behind the ARVN henchmen and watch while they did the car battery-electrode-testicle thing on captured Vietminh. This way, we never actually tortured anyone ourselves.

I suppose it’s arguably a “new” thing that we’re not only outsourcing the torture this time but also doing it ourselves.

Nothing new to see here, I fear.

…Which is why I said “to a point”, didn’t I?
I am referring, to be more specific, to long term-contortions, uncomfortable sleep positions working in concert with deprivation of said sleep, which primarily inflicts “discomfort” as opposed to actual large amounts of pain, such as dislocations or stretching. Sorry for not being more specific (though I did specify contortions as opposed to the catch-all ?stress positions?, that was also not specific enough. My bad).
What the interrogatee thinks is not necessarily indicative to what the reality is. My pain/discomfort threshold determines how I react, but it doesn’t determine the actual medical or physical reality of what is going on. I couldn?t stand listening to hours and hours of nails-on-chalkboard- I suspect I?d spill my guts after an hour or two (if that). If I had a gun to my head, I would also probably strongly consider giving up the information in question. That doesn?t mean, however, that such treatment crosses the line into unacceptability and inflicts an unnecessary amount of physical or psychological damage.

Timmah- you bring up a fair point, and I would like to point out, however, that the Abu Ghraib stuff was exactly the sort of thing which constitutes torture.
No questions were being asked, and therefore there is no purpose for such actions and, more importantly, there was no possibility for the subject to end his distress. Moreover, such positions and methods are instead more likely to cause outrage (as we saw), as the abuses inflicted were primarily about causing shame and such as a group, which is not at all useful (though such could lower the psychological resistance, it could just as easily backfire). Sexual abuse, like deliberate inflicting of bodily harm, falls into a different realm of moral problems than the normal methods, and therefore falls into the “unacceptable” category.
It was gratuitous, just as (I suspect), most of the stuff at Gitmo is. Sadistic methods of keeping the prisoners in line and entertaining their captors- brutal and unnecessary (just like- it should be noted- such treatment in state pens all over the States).
My support or apathy (I.E. what do the experts say?) regarding the use of certain techniques is predicated on the prisoners in question being legitimate military or insurgent members, who are believed to have certain intelligence. It’s a waste of time and effort and, in general, unnecessarily cruel for Intel to go around applying these techniques to every prisoner or suspected insurgent, hoping they will spill their guts.
In order to be effective, the interrogators have to have some idea of what they are asking about, so that the answers to their questions will be able to be studied for clues afterward more effectively. You can?t go fishing and call it an interrogation- it could, theoretically, produce results, but more than likely, it will not (with, of course, certain exceptions). It, for me, is not so much about the techniques involved as the situation in which we deploy said techniques.
To put it shortly, our current policy is unacceptable in that the standard of who constitutes a “confirmed” enemy combatant is pretty shaky, and who has “usable” intel is even less refined. Indeed, we apparently can?t decide what precisely these individuals are- enemy combatants or criminals. That needs to be resolved (enemy combatants strikes me as perhaps more appropriate for those captured overseas, though it is difficult to determine what some of those persons in Gitmo are) before we can proceed, and allow me to say that, whatever statutes apply to the treatment of said prisoners in either situation, I believe we should be compelled to comply with them.
In addition, there is insufficient punishment for those who would inflict gratuitous and unnecessarily demeaning treatment upon prisoners- though I believe that that is something that goes without saying here.

That’s what bugs me the most. Little Sandra Dee over there, torturing insurgents.

See here.

Mr.X – Oh yah, Oh yah, eh? :)