Dec 01 2005
A Must Read On Interrogation
Ace of Spades has a great post up on aggressive interrogation vs. torture vs. reality which is a must read. If you want to be fully armed to debate a liberal on this subject, all you need to know is right here.
I don’t mind if the people doing this aggressive interrogation are highly-trained and the subjects are pretty clearly terrorists, but I worry if these people are really so smart and trained as the author claims.
I do think that innocent people are sometimes arrested because of mistakes about names or tainted information.
I don’t think Abu Graib was policy, or they would never have had their cameras down in the dungeons, but the people in charge were not doing such a great job of supervising soldiers. It gave the enemy propaganda.
I read that in Saudi Arabia they have some program of reverse brainwashing. First they have the prisoners talk to a radical Imam, and then they gradually work them down to a normal Imam. If you have time, this sounded like a good idea.
As far as calling it torture, we would call these tactics torture if they were applied to some Russian dissenter. Of course, they haven’t been violent.
I am sure these tactics work. I don’t want to see people accidentally killed or maimed. I do worry about these sorts of behaviors seeping into our system.
Still, I do think that these techniques do uncover terrorists and do save the lives of innocent people.
The people doing this interrogation have to have really high morals; I think that doing this interrogation might change a person.