That's what this guy says who helped capture Zarqawi:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/28/AR2008112802242.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

Quote :

"... I personally conducted more than 300 interrogations, and I supervised more than 1,000. The methods my team used are not classified (they're listed in the unclassified Field Manual), but the way we used them was, I like to think, unique. We got to know our enemies, we learned to negotiate with them, and we adapted criminal investigative techniques to our work (something that the Field Manual permits, under the concept of "ruses and trickery"). It worked. Our efforts started a chain of successes that ultimately led to Zarqawi. Over the course of this renaissance in interrogation tactics, our attitudes changed. We no longer saw our prisoners as the stereotypical al-Qaeda evildoers we had been repeatedly briefed to expect; we saw them as Sunni Iraqis, often family men protecting themselves from Shiite militias and trying to ensure that their fellow Sunnis would still have some access to wealth and power in the new Iraq. ... "

As a side note, The Simpsons had an amusing vignette related to this issue in the most recent episode...

12/1/2008 6:13:43 PM

Folks have been saying this for a while now.

12/1/2008 6:24:59 PM

True, but some folks still don't believe it.

12/1/2008 6:27:06 PM

Makes intuitive sense to me. I know I'd lie myself silly under torture.

12/1/2008 6:33:11 PM

but but, they hate America!

12/1/2008 6:33:23 PM

Thread incorrectly titled

12/1/2008 7:15:11 PM

I think I'll believe Jack Bauer over this guy

12/1/2008 7:23:45 PM

WHERE IS THE BOMB?

12/1/2008 7:27:36 PM

^^^ your momma

12/1/2008 7:29:08 PM

Quote :

"Thread incorrectly titled"

agreed...but when you have a moron making the thread, you have to expect it

12/2/2008 2:24:17 AM

So 1 in 1000 tells him "you didnt torture me like i though you would, so Ill tell you everything"

I'm no expert here, but shouldnt the first step in every interogation be trying to obtain information without force first? Then, once they wont talk for some period of time, move forward with more intensive interogation techniques?

This all boils down to how you define torture. Bush has said he is against torture (bamboo shoots under fingernails, breaking each finger, ect..) but not against the stuff in the field manual.

12/2/2008 11:16:54 AM