Torture Report

[abradley]

Torture doesn't work outside of movies and TV. So if you're OK with torture, you're OK with government being evil for the purpose of failing to get information.

Not sure of that, some say it's been very useful:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khalid_Sheikh_Mohammed#Capture_and_interrogation

June 2008, a New York Times article, citing unnamed CIA officers, claimed that Mohammed had been held in a black site or secret facility in Poland near Szymany Airport, about 100 miles north of Warsaw. There he was interrogated under waterboarding before he began to "cooperate."[75]

Am I OK with torture? If one of mine is likely to die because somebody with info isn't water boarded ... then water board 'em.

 

[Bootstoots]

Yeah, tortured people will usually give you whatever they think you want to hear with no regard for the truth. It's especially hard to determine who actually knows nothing that you're looking for vs who is only pretending to, because the ones who really know nothing will break down and confess all sorts of made-up stuff that never happened. It's a really crappy technique, in addition to being inhumane.

 

[Cutlass]

Not sure of that, some say it's been very useful:

Am I OK with torture? If one of mine is likely to die because somebody with info isn't water boarded ... then water board 'em.

So if you interrogate them without torture, you may or may not get information you can rely on in a reasonable amount of time.

If, on the other hand, you torture them, then they've won. Because you will not get reliable information out of them in time to do any good.

If you torture them, they win.

If you torture them, it is the same thing as if you work for them. Because you specifically and deliberately made the choice to not get information out of them in any reasonable amount of time.

If you torture a member of ISIS, you serve ISIS.

If you torture a member of Al-Qaeda, you serve Al-Qaeda.

If you torture a member of the Taliban, you serve the Taliban.

This is what you don't understand. If you choose to torture, you choose to lose. You choose for them to win. You made the decision that you lose, that they win.

Why the <snip> would you do that?

Moderator Action: Inappropriate language removed.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

 

[abradley]

Yeah, tortured people will usually give you whatever they think you want to hear with no regard for the truth. It's especially hard to determine who actually knows nothing that you're looking for vs who is only pretending to, because the ones who really know nothing will break down and confess all sorts of made-up stuff that never happened. It's a really crappy technique, totally aside from being inhumane.

When you interrogate, you first ask about secrets you already know but they think are still secret.

You don't say 'tell us everything' and accept everything they spout.

There's an art to interrogation, a Dark art:

The Dark Art of Interrogation
The most effective way to gather intelligence and thwart terrorism can also be a direct route into morally repugnant terrain. A survey of the landscape of persuasion

MARK BOWDEN OCTOBER 2003 ISSUE GLOBAL

(Continued)
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2003/10/the-dark-art-of-interrogation/302791/

 

[Bootstoots]

Not sure of that, some say it's been very useful:

Am I OK with torture? If one of mine is likely to die because somebody with info isn't water boarded ... then water board 'em.

From the article you quoted, there are things like this:

In an article discussing the reliability of Khalid's confession and the motive for giving misinformation under torture, Ali Soufan, a former FBI special agent with considerable experience interrogating al-Qaeda operatives, pointed out that:

When they are in pain, people will say anything to get the pain to stop. Most of the time, they will lie, make up anything to make you stop hurting them. That means the information you're getting is useless.

His words are echoed by the US Army Training Manual's section on interrogation, which suggests that:

the use of force is a poor technique, as it ... can induce the source to say whatever he thinks the interrogator wants to hear.

Again, the US Army manual prohibits physical torture because it produces a whole bunch of nonsense and practically no useful information. In the Senate report on the CIA torture program, the number one (of 20) finding was "The CIA's use of its enhanced interrogation techniques was not an effective means of acquiring intelligence or gaining cooperation from detainees." Here is the Wiki article with all the findings.

People who support torture are always using "ticking time bomb" type scenarios to justify it, but it wouldn't work at all in that case. If you're the terrorist, all you need to do is come up with some lies that send the interrogators on wild goose chases until the bomb goes off. If you're an innocent bystander who was being tortured by mistake, you'll also come up with lies that will send them on wild goose chases, because you're being tortured, you want it to stop, and nothing you say will convince your torturers that you are actually innocent. It just doesn't work.

 

[abradley]

From the article you quoted, there are things like this:



Again, the US Army manual prohibits physical torture because it produces a whole bunch of nonsense and practically no useful information. In the Senate report on the CIA torture program, the number one (of 20) finding was "The CIA's use of its enhanced interrogation techniques was not an effective means of acquiring intelligence or gaining cooperation from detainees." Here is the Wiki article with all the findings.

People who support torture are always using "ticking time bomb" type scenarios to justify it, but it wouldn't work at all in that case. If you're the terrorist, all you need to do is come up with some lies that send the interrogators on wild goose chases until the bomb goes off. If you're an innocent bystander who was being tortured by mistake, you'll also come up with lies that will send them on wild goose chases, because you're being tortured, you want it to stop, and nothing you say will convince your torturers that you are actually innocent. It just doesn't work.

Ticking time bombs are the only reason I'd OK water boarding.

As for the results from water boarding ... that's a 'he said she said' situation.

 

[Bootstoots]

When you interrogate, you first ask about secrets you already know but they think are still secret.

You don't say 'tell us everything' and accept everything they spout.

There's an art to interrogation, a Dark art:

Well yes, you'll eventually get true things out of them as well, mixed in among the nonsense. You might recover the known secrets, and end up thinking you're getting the truth out of them, but have no way of knowing whether the other things they say are true.

Try to dig up something from after the Senate report came out (December 2014). Your information seems to come from the Bush Administration years, when neocons filled the media with lies and half-truths about what they were doing, and not a whole lot was known for sure by the general public. A lot of real information (Senate report, Wikileaks documents, etc) has come out in the past few years, and as far as I can tell there's a total consensus that the CIA torture program was a disaster.

 

[Cutlass]

Ticking time bombs are the only reason I'd OK water boarding.

As for the results from water boarding ... that's a 'he said she said' situation.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times. The bomb went off a year before anyone got any information out of him.

 

[Bootstoots]

You know what abradley, you should read this thread, where our very own ex-military interrogator Commodore answers questions about interrogation.

He does say that they did, at least once, manage to get time-sensitive information out of someone by playing a good cop/bad cop routine with the Iraqi counterpart, where the Iraqis would torture the suspect for a bit until the Americans stepped back in the room and made them stop. But he also said that torture is very ineffective outside of that setup and that the CIA is extremely sloppy and amateurish relative to the Army. There are much more reliable ways to get your information than torture, most of which involve gaining rapport with your subject.

Maybe he'll show up and provide first-hand information. He's already posted in this thread several times; here's one such post:

I've seen criminals beaten up in front of me by the police until they gave up information, which they did, and it was accurate.

I also know how counter-insurgency was carried out and how it worked.

Torture doesn't work for some things, it works for others. To say it never works is incredibly stupid. I'm not justifying it, I'm just stating a fact.

I guarantee the police you are talking about could have gotten a lot more information without the beating though. Sure, it would have taken longer since effective interrogation requires "breaking" the subject first (which can take anywhere from an hour to a month depending on how well the individual has been trained in interrogation resistance). And by beating the criminal, they destroy any chance of flipping him/her into a source that can continue to give them information about other criminal activities. As an intelligence collector that is your main goal, to build a source network that creates a constant stream of information flowing into your hands so you always maintain a clear picture of the "battlefield".

The yield from torture is just too small and too unreliable to make it a viable intelligence collection technique, especially when it comes to long-term tactical intelligence collection or strategic intelligence collection. Sure, the few nuggets of information you get might occasionally be accurate (and I do mean occasionally), but I guarantee the person you are torturing will not tell you everything they know that might be of value to you; they will only tell you enough to make the pain stop.

EDIT: Please don't take this as an insult because it is not meant as such; but I see your reasoning comes from never actually having to collect intelligence or being trained in the techniques to do so. To properly and thoroughly debrief someone is a long, tedious, and delicate process. Torture does not allow that process to properly happen and will result in very poor intelligence collection an reporting. I'll use the Iraqi Army as an example since I was attached to them for 3 months to aid them in their counter-insurgency efforts. They tortured their detainees to get intelligence, and they though they did an awesome job because they would get the location of a single weapons cache and would swear that was all the guy knew. Not to toot my own horn, but I would do a follow-up interrogation without torture and I would get the locations of other caches, safehouses, names and physical descriptions of other members of his cell, and on occasion I would discover the guy I was interrogating was actually the commander of the cell when he told the IA guys he was just a low-level member.

 

[abradley]

Well yes, you'll eventually get true things out of them as well, mixed in among the nonsense. You might recover the known secrets, and end up thinking you're getting the truth out of them, but have no way of knowing whether the other things they say are true.

Try to dig up something from after the Senate report came out (December 2014). Your information seems to come from the Bush Administration years, when neocons filled the media with lies and half-truths about what they were doing, and not a whole lot was known for sure by the general public. A lot of real information (Senate report, Wikileaks documents, etc) has come out in the past few years, and as far as I can tell there's a total consensus that the CIA torture program was a disaster.

Al Quada wasn't effectively destroyed.

Even Obama felt Iraq was safe enough to pull all the troops ... who neutralized AQ? The NYPD?

 

[Cutlass]

Al Quada wasn't effectively destroyed. [/B]

Even Obama felt Iraq was safe enough to pull all the troops ... who neutralized AQ? The NYPD?

I see how you're still evading the question of the fact that waterboarding will not provide timely and accurate information.

 

[EgonSpengler]

At least one amusing story came out of this fustercluck: Some years ago now, the commandant of the US Army academy at West Point traveled personally to Los Angeles and walked onto the set of the television show 24. He was unhappy with the show's portrayal of torture as an effective technique - he said the show was putting bad ideas in the heads of his cadets - and wanted to talk to the writers and producers about it. A production assistant, seeing his uniform, assumed he was an extra and told him to come back later.

 

[Commodore]

Al Quada wasn't effectively destroyed.

Yes, they were. Al Qaida is no longer able to function as an international terrorist organization. Right now, they are nothing more than extremely localized terrorist groups that just happen to call themselves Al Qaida. As of right now though, there is almost zero coordination between the different Al Qaida groups in different countries.

I see how you're still evading the question of the fact that waterboarding will not provide timely and accurate information.

Because he doesn't want to believe that torture doesn't work, despite all the evidence that proves it. Hell, I have first hand experience in the matter and have seen how ineffective it is.

If there is anything about torture that can even be remotely considered a positive for the intelligence collection process, it's that it can sometimes be used for rapport building. For example: There were occasions when my Iraqi counterparts would be torturing a detainee before I arrived. Once I got there and took over the interrogation, the detainee would become very cooperative because he knows I'm not going to torture him, so he'll cooperate to ensure that he keeps getting to talk to me instead of being turned back over to the Iraqis.

 

[aelf]

I see how you're still evading the question of the fact that waterboarding will not provide timely and accurate information.

Maybe he does it on his girls and they actually do give him a discount?

 

[abradley]

The consensus say torture doesn't work, Vietnam's Hanoi Hilton proved it does.

http://www.washingtondecoded.com/site/2014/12/tfr294.html
11 December 2014

Who Interrogated American Electronic Warfare Specialists
in North Vietnam During the War?

The Riddle of the Task Force Russia 294 Report

By Merle L. Pribbenow

{Snip}

Jensen wrote that when he first arrived at H&#7887;a Lò Prison, the infamous jail that American POWs dubbed the “Hanoi Hilton,” he was subjected to long hours of brutal physical torture by the North Vietnamese, torture that finally forced him to begin talking. Jensen wrote that when he told his North Vietnamese interrogator he had previously served with the North American Air Defense Command (NORAD), a new interrogator arrived to question him in more detail on this subject. In the early editions of his book, Jensen wrote (e.g., on page 50 of the 1978 edition) that he thought the new interrogator “might have been a Russian;” in the 1989 edition, Jensen wrote (on page 44) that the North Vietnamese called in “an interrogator who was, I believe, a Russian.” In the earlier editions, Jensen also wrote only that the presumed Russian asked him questions about NORAD. But in later editions, Jensen provided the following additional information:

Another question they asked was about our F-105 missions. How could we find and attack their SAM sites? What electronics equipment did we have? . . . . [10]

and there's John Mccain:

Torture: John McCain’s unique, brutal perspective (+video)
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politi...John-McCain-s-unique-brutal-perspective-video

{Snip}
In McCain’s case, he revealed in his 1999 family memoir “Faith of My Fathers” (both his father and his grandfather had been US Navy admirals), he was forced to sign a confession of "war crimes." Although many prisoners of war under torture had the same experience, and although he refused an offer of early release, McCain still sees this as a personal failing.

Everything I've read sez the prisoners talked/broke under torture, but they helped each other by saying 'Everybody breaks, just don't stay broken, start resisting again.'

Am I for torture, NO!

But can see waterboarding as a tool when you first catch a terrorist and their disoriented:

How Effective Is Water Boarding?
http://science.howstuffworks.com/water-boarding1.htm
(Continued)

Very.

 

[abradley]

I see how you're still evading the question of the fact that waterboarding will not provide timely and accurate information.

Not evading anything. Where was the question asked?

 

[Bootstoots]

Yes, of course they talk. They provide a stream of lies and truths jumbled together as the prisoner desperately tries to find the things to say that will make the torture stop. This isn't very useful for intelligence. On the other hand, if you cultivate a false sense of trust by serving as the only person with whom they can have positive interactions, the vast majority of people will eventually start cooperating.

From the last link you posted:

When the CIA used the water-boarding technique on al-Qaida operative and supposed "9/11 mastermind" Khalid Sheik Mohammed, he reportedly lasted more than two minutes before confessing to everything of which he was accused. Anonymous CIA sources report that Mohammed's interrogators were impressed.

Many CIA officials see water boarding as a poor interrogation method because it scares the prisoner so much you can't trust anything he tells you. Senator John McCain, who was tortured as a POW during the Vietnam War, says water boarding is definitely a form of torture. Human rights groups agree unanimously that "simulated drowning," causing the prisoner to believe he is about to die, is undoubtedly a form of psychological torture. The international community recognizes "mock executions" as a form of torture, and many place water boarding in that category. In 1947, a Japanese soldier who used water boarding against a U.S. citizen during World War II was sentenced to 15 years in U.S. prison for committing a war crime.

Do you understand the problem now? It's not like tortured people don't talk - they talk quite a lot, actually. It's that you can't trust anything they say, because what they will say anything to make the torture stop without regard for the truth.

Now it is great for extracting false (or true) confessions. As I highlighted, Khalid Sheikh Mohammad confessed to everything he was accused of. Undoubtedly he was guilty of a lot of what he confessed to, but probably not everything. So if you're trying to figure out what KSM did and knew about, and what he didn't, this is completely useless. He'd confess to nuking Pluto if the interrogators wanted him to.

 

[warpus]

People who think that torture is a good way to get information out of suspects are ignoring studies and probably getting all their information from the TV show 24.

 

[Flying Pig]

Yes, that's precisely the problem - as Commodore set out, people only give you good information if they (for some definition of the term) like you, or at least positively want to give you good information. I should point out that during British special forces selection, the last phase is called 'escape and evasion', where they kit you out with an old Great War overcoat and send you out on the hills with only a sketch map you made the night before, and you have to navigate through various checkpoints while avoiding a team of specialists (and their dogs) sent to catch you. Eventually, everyone gets caught (even if you 'win', this still happens) and are taken off to a bunker, where (again, real Intelligence Corps folks who do this for a living) you are treated like a PoW and interrogated for a couple of days. Obviously, they can't actually follow up on their threats of 'proper' torture, or their mock executions: the most they can do is talk (and shout) at you, make you stand in stress positions, deprive you of sleep, and shove you about a bit. Despite this - and remember, everyone doing this is a trained, professional, experienced soldier, at the final stage of an incredibly difficult selection process, for something that everyone doing it really, really wants - a fair number, perhaps nearly half, of people either give in or fail the requirement of saying nothing but the basic information they're required to give (name, rank, service number, date of birth). It's not as if we need to torture people to make them talk.

EDIT: Cross-posted, though I think it still works.

 

[abradley]

Yes, of course they talk. They provide a stream of lies and truths jumbled together as the prisoner desperately tries to find the things to say that will make the torture stop. This isn't very useful for intelligence. On the other hand, if you cultivate a false sense of trust by serving as the only person with whom they can have positive interactions, the vast majority of people will eventually start cooperating.

From the last link you posted:



Do you understand the problem now? It's not like tortured people don't talk - they talk quite a lot, actually. It's that you can't trust anything they say, because what they will say anything to make the torture stop without regard for the truth.

Now it is great for extracting false (or true) confessions. As I highlighted, Khalid Sheikh Mohammad confessed to everything he was accused of. Undoubtedly he was guilty of a lot of what he confessed to, but probably not everything. So if you're trying to figure out what KSM did and knew about, and what he didn't, this is completely useless. He'd confess to nuking Pluto if the interrogators wanted him to.

Your assuming the interrogators are numbskulls.

I am not.

I see it like a 'Hostage crisis situation', you don't let a rookie handle it, you call for a highly trained interrogation team.

Don't tell the terrorists what you'll do ahead of time ... surprise 'em.

As for Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, that's a 'he said, she said' situation.