[tw]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

I really have no idea what the reliability is of any type of interrogation. All I've heard is a bag of wind from both sides, and never from anybody with an actual background in the matter.

But you have direct quotes from people who do this stuff. We have long known from professionals that torture results in inconclusive facts and more often results in lies. Furthermore, a tortured man cannot be 'read' or tested with a 'lie detector' test. A man who talks without torture can be 'read' and can tested with a lie detector machine. Professional interrogators state this repeatedly.

From the BBC of September 2006 entitled The jihadi who turned 'supergrass' and also quoted in The Cellar on 30 September 2006 as Why does America need Secret Prisons?

"I believed that the police were very cruel and used torture to get their answers," he said.

But Mr Abbas was in for a surprise. He was treated with civility and Muslim respect.

As a result, Nasir Abbas blew open the entire terrorist organization called Jemaah Islamiyah - also known as the Bali bombers. Those who remain free quickly separated from Jemaah Islamiyah and are rumored to have formed small isolated terrorist cells. Why? Mr Abbas was not tortured. Therefore he could cooperate in response to his own convictions.

Same is reported on America's earliest interrogators in a finally not secret gathering reported in The Washington Post on 6 Oct 2007 entitled Fort Hunt's Quiet Men Break Silence on WWII and also posted in The Cellar.

"We got more information out of a German general with a game of chess or Ping-Pong than they do today, with their torture," said Henry Kolm, 90, an MIT physicist who had been assigned to play chess in Germany with Hitler's deputy, Rudolf Hess.

Blunt criticism of modern enemy interrogations was a common refrain at the ceremonies held beside the Potomac River near Alexandria. ...

The interrogators had standards that remain a source of pride and honor.

"During the many interrogations, I never laid hands on anyone," said George Frenkel, 87, of Kensington. "We extracted information in a battle of the wits. I'm proud to say I never compromised my humanity."

The reason to justify torture is an assumption that a tortured man will talk. Yes. And professional interrogators then note how few truths are mixed with too many lies. Torture is when the interrogator has no idea and no way of knowing what is truth – and desperately needs to know that truth. But torture often results in statements that cannot be confirmed by all common means of judging validity, is often what the interrogators want to hear, and resulting statements are too often completely bogus. Torture so routinely results in bad information as to even create a long list of phony Orange alerts.

When does torture work? When some ‘feel’ it must work. After all, anyone tortured will tell only truths – right? Therefore all that torture in Abu Ghriad with the arrival of Gen Miller got confessions of WMDs, terrorists hiding in America, and Orange Alert attacks on the Prudential Building in Newark and the Golden Gate Bridge.