Casca: You make a couple of excellent points, and I agree that excising certain aspects is in order.

By the way, “Wonton” is a soup. I believe you were looking for “wanton”.

As I mentioned in my posting, yes, there is a good deal of difference between interrogation and torture. Stress techniques, including psyops, do not qualify as torture to me.

I find it somewhat repellent that you use the term “gold standard” when referring to the SD. Whatever respective differences that might exist between us, let me be clear when I say that anything having to do with the Nazi regime is abhorrent to me. That you find something noteworthy in how they and the Gestapo conduct torture is unconscionable, but it’s also your business.

Any violent methods used to extract or extort information or intel is torture in my book. While you might consider wanton brutality against civilians and non-combatants not to be torture is splitting hairs in my opinion. Brutal it might be, but it is also torture in my opinion. Making parents watch while soldiers nail a baby’s head to a wall is torture: The act was designed to force the witnesses to talk and it was done with that explicit understanding. Thus, brutality and torture are not mutually exclusive; in many instances they are one and the same thing.

As to my little “jaunt” through Central America: I was there for three years (1985 – 1988) and during some of the hottest periods of the conflict. It was not a limited tour by any stretch of the imagination, and I have the nightmares to prove it.

I don’t know your background, but I do take issue with those that advocate war and all of it’s terrible effects, but are unwilling to do any of the heavy lifting. Like I said, my abhorrence is based on personal experience, not something derived from my readings in the comfort of home and hearth.