[quote=afx114][quote=Allan from Fallbrook]You would be amazed what sitting down with someone over a period of hours or days can produce in terms of useful intelligence.[/quote]

Forgive me if I am wrong, but didn’t Saddam reveal some stuff to his guards after months of being buddy-buddy with them? What we should do with suspected terrorists is throw back a few beers with them, play some Lego Star Wars, break the ice, and shoot the shit — who knows what they might reveal.
[/quote]

Afx: I’m not suggesting being “buddy buddy” with them. There are plenty of effective techniques that can be used, and most of these incorporate perfectly legal methods. For instance, we used to interrogate “platoon” style, meaning we would question prisoners in teams, and each team would go for 6 to 8 hour stretches. It was extremely effective and this same technique is used by US law enforcement, including the FBI.

Another technique would be to sleep deprive someone for a period of days, while playing tapes of a “victim” screaming in agony (supposedly while being tortured) during that period. The prisoner would then be led into a room with a single chair in the middle, torture implements on a table to the side, and blood on the floor. The blood was pig’s blood, the tape was actually one of us screaming and the torture implements had never been used. The prisoner, however, didn’t know any of that and was generally happy to help us in any way that he could. The mere threat of punishment and pain, combined with the sleep deprivation, was hugely effective.