Should civilized nations use "Enhanced Interrogation" techni

[Occhidiangela]

Yes, yes I do. You're talking about extracting information from people who do not want to talk to you. You're going to what, keep them up past their bedtime and let them go without dessert?

This is a thread about *coercive* methods. If you don't push hunger at least to the point where they're desperate, then you might as well just feed them, at least then they'll be lucid. If you don't make them "lack" sleep until they're "deprived" of it, what exactly are you expecting to get? Yawns? In this context, if you say "hunger" and "lack of sleep" are acceptable, I think it's pretty reasonable to interpret that as as "starvation" (not necessarily fatal, but damaging) and "sleep deprivation." If all you mean is that you don't give them a second helping of potatoes and make sure they're up at the crack of dawn, then fine, but it's a bit misleading.

Regardless, even if this is 100% the pot calling the kettle black, that doesn't alter the charge. I didn't say squat all about never being allowed to use any kind of mental discomfort whatsoever. I just said that your "physical harm" criterion doesn't make sense.

-Jester

If there is no threat of a consequence, there is little to no incentive for cooperation. When time is no facter, that may be an agreeable state of play. When it is (and in politics, perception is reality) then playing the waiting game is a guaranteed non successful ploy. When you are dealing with the class of people that fit into "True Believer" models, see Hoffer, you are not dealing with anything other than a difficult to impossible information extraction task. See also Stockdale, a True Believer in his own right.

I don't give a flying rat's arse that a terrorist arsehole was waterboarded. You don't need a kangaroo court to know who is or isn't in that group. What you need is to find them, and eliminate them (and in my opinion, everyone related to them by the second degree, just to get the point across.)

You and people like you weren't tortured, nor were the hundreds of other people kept, rightly or wrongly, at Gitmo.

Guess why?

You aren't a threat, nor do you habitually associate with people who blow other people up by flying planes into buildings for reasons that remain acceptable to you, obviously, but not to me. Let me make this clear: I do not recall you ever taking any joy in the attacks, nor in the almost daily suicide bomber attacks in Iraq since the civil war turned up a notch about four years ago. Four years ago. The sustained slaughter of the people minding their own effing business continues, all attempts at "winning herats and minds" considered. What I do recall after the 9-11 attacks was you, along with your countrymen being most supportive.

In the short term, anyway.

It's the reasons that you seem to accept, the very assertion of wrongness of the modern world that was attacked, and of which you are an integral part by your own philosophy and sensibilities.

Jester, I think you make an enormous mistake in presuming that the war of symbols will only be won your way, by your perceived method of rightness. The enemy gets a vote. They spit at your (and my) modern world, and its effete sensibilities. Your school of thought isn't winning anyone's hearts and minds, except within your own imagination. Neither did the Bush crowd win anyone over, certainly, with the approach taken. Two poor courses to proceed on, neither of which works.

Assuming that the hearts and minds are winnable is the core of the delusion.

As to mental torture, the carelessnes with which that term has been used, and the complaints made about any treatment other than simple confinement, renders the discussion pre poisoned.

You either define terms and criterion in detail, clearly and explicitly, or don't waste anyone's time with such a moving, ambiguous target.

Occhi