A simple-minded (?) question about using torture

[bobbieinok]

to get info from prisoners.

I thought there were all sorts of drugs that made it impossible for people being questioned to lie. So why use torture and/or threats???

....Because questioners are sadistic??

....To break down the psyche of the person being questioned??

If info is really the goal......why not use drugs???

[Bertha Venation]

1. think of the children!

"If info is really the goal......why not use drugs???"

Because it would be contradictory to Our Nation's Necessary War On Drugs.

[maggrwaggr]

2. they do use drugs.

Check out this month's Atlantic. There's a really good article on torture and extracting information from people. Very enlightening and scary.

[TreasonousBastard]

7. Good article.

And it does make the distinction between "torture" and "coercion."

Interrogation is as old as humanity. Cops interrogate witnesses and suspects, governments interrogate spies and enemies...

Simple physical torture has always been easy and available, but the old Star Chamber techniques really don't give much valuable information. Some people will say anything to stop the thumbscrews. Methinks that where such things still exist, it is more to satisfy the sadistic fantasies of the torturer than to produce anything worthwhile.

Interrogation techniques now are incredibly sophisticated, and you don't hear that much about any more about cops solving crimes by beating up on suspects or drugging them. Good interrogators spend years learning the tricks, and it's a psychological battle.

If, however, you're not that good at it, or don't have the time, a bit of physical pressure, or at least the threat of it, seems to be the order of the day in some quarters.

[Guaranteed]

11. You wouldn't happen

to have a link to the article online, would you? I just recently moved and my last month's Atlantic was forwarded to me, and by the time it got to me it was a mere cover.

[CBHagman]

13. Here's a link.

www.theatlantic.com/unbound/interviews/int2003-09-11.htm

[thebigidea]

3. the technology isn't really there for "truth drugs"

though I'm sure our good friends in the Bush Admin are dutifully working on a new generation of chemical mind-poisons that we'll find out about in 20 years or so.

[alexwcovington]

4. Torture is free and quick

GlaxoSmithKline sells its TruGel brand lie suppressant for roughly $90 bjillion dollars a dose. :P

Yeah, drugs cost money and take time to work. Torture is free, relatively quick, and generally very gratifying to the sadists who inflict it.

[DrWeird]

5. You mean like sodium pentathol?

I believe it makes a person giddy and gabby, but not really the "truth serum" you see on Mannix.

[DuctapeFatwa]

6. Torturing the families is more effective. They have had the 7 and 9 yr old

sons of one guy for months. That one they couldn't keep out of the media. We don't know how many other families have been seized.
==============
"Col. David Hogg, commander of the 2nd Brigade of the 4th Infantry Division, said tougher methods are being used to gather the intelligence. On Wednesday night, he said, his troops picked up the wife and daughter of an Iraqi lieutenant general. They left a note: "If you want your family released, turn yourself in." Such tactics are justified, he said, because, "It's an intelligence operation with detainees, and these people have info."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A54345-2003Jul27.html

[Clete]

8. Torture historically has proved to be ineffective

for the most part and often results in disinformation, so I just put it down to the sadism of the people who do it. They justify it with patriotism and the need to avenge their countrymen, but it's just sadism. There are other humane ways to get intelligence.

[JNelson6563]

9. effective tool of intimidation

torture a few dissenters and set them free to share their tale of woe. Such tales (accompanied by tell-tale signs such as injuries/scars) tend to help keep the peasants in line.

Nothing quite like fear, you gotta admit!

Julie

[rasputin1952]

10. Fear and intimidation are the rules in torture...

sadistical bastards use it all the time, and I do believe it is for their own gratification.

Psychological torture is worse, by far, than physical torture. The thought that ones children or spouse might be getting physical pain because of an individual, will break almost anyone. Humans can generally take more pain than they think they can, but psychological scars can last for a lifetime.

An instance of another form of psychological/physical torture, is timing. You are in a room with nothing but a lightbulb and a clock.
Everyday, at precisely 0815 & 1745 hours, someone comes in and beats you to a pulp. In a remarkably short period of time, you dread those two times of day, and forget about the other hours that pain is not inflicted. Pretty soon, you are waiting, in great anxiety for those two specific times, the beatings are bad, but nothing like the waiting for the inevitable.

IMHO, I think that anyone who tortures people, should be put in a cage, and left to rot. It is a repulsive practice, and as stated before, there are far more humane ways to get information.

:kick:

[AP]

12. Ultimately, it's just sadism. Studies show that evidence gathered from ...

...torture is very unreliable. People will say anything to stop torture.

Well, not just sadism...

It's actually used to get false confessions, in writing, and signed, which are then used to impeach oral evidence under oath at trial.

In other words, the point of torture is to get UNRELIABLE evidence. They don't want the truth.

Of course, you can torture someone to get evidence which isn't intended to be used at trial. But you still have the false confession problem. People are less inclined to tell the truth if they're tortured.

The movie The Name of the Father was about a guy (who ended up marrying a Kennedy) who was questioned for hours on end (almost torture) until he just named a bunch of people as IRA terrorists whom he thought the police would never arrest because they were so obviously not guilty. The Crown ended up getting convictions of those people based on this unreliable evidence.

[mike_c]

14. it's not as simple as many of the replies to this thread suggest....

Any information obtained from a hostile source is inherently unreliable, whether obtained under duress or "voluntarily." The unreliability of information obtained under torture is not really any different than the unreliability of voluntary lies, or the unreliability of information obtained after psychological coercion. Inherently unreliable information must always be judged in the context of more reliable information, building up a picture of the "truth" over time. As someone noted earlier, people will often say anything to satisfy their torturer, but skilled interrogators know this, and learn how to judge the quality of information obtained under duress. The interrogator's job is to manipulate the subject into telling the truth, and simple torture rarely accomplishes this, and even if it does, interrogators must have some independent framework of information within which to separate truth from lies, or even from misunderstanding.