Wouldn't using the "Stockholm Syndrome" be a better interrogation technique?

[StormRider]

I always heard that torture doesn't really work as an interrogation technique. So, I thought wouldn't using the "Stockholm Syndrome" be better? That's the technique of trying to win the friendship of the person you're interrogating.

Saddam Cried

 

[heyheybooboo]

Topic: Wouldn't using the "Stockholm Syndrome" be a better interrogation technique?

Mind-altering drugs. And a puppy.

Then taze their nads.

 

[Jaskalas]

That could be an option for some people. Others like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed might be difficult to relate to, unless you know someone who cuts heads off people.

 

[fskimospy]

Yes, befriending your captives is by far the best way to get large amounts of high quality information out of them. In fact, this was the standard technique for US interrogators for decades until shortly after 9/11.

After torture and harsh interrogation proved to be an unmitigated catastrophe, professional interrogators have been brought back in to retrain our Army back to effective ways of getting information, mostly relying on building trust as you describe.

 

[jonks]

All I see lately are articles from life long interrogators stating that torture doesn't work, and overall is just bad policy for multitudes of reasons. I haven't seen any interrogators come out and say torturing does work and is good policy. All we see is Giuliani idiotically comparing his late campaign nights with sleep deprivation, and Rummy saying he stands at his desk so that's the same as stress positions. How about the administration produces someone with credibility that says the methods we use in Guantanamo (that of course aren't torture because we don't torture) actually work.

 

[ProfJohn]

Originally posted by: sirjonk
All I see lately are articles from life long interrogators stating that torture doesn't work, and overall is just bad policy for multitudes of reasons. I haven't seen any interrogators come out and say torturing does work and is good policy. All we see is Giuliani idiotically comparing his late campaign nights with sleep deprivation, and Rummy saying he stands at his desk so that's the same as stress positions. How about the administration produces someone with credibility that says the methods we use in Guantanamo (that of course aren't torture because we don't torture) actually work.

Which explains why we are going around and torturing everyone we can right?

Obviously Bush and Co know that torture doesn't work, but they just keep doing it to piss off the liberals. :roll:

 

[yobarman]

This is a great song by Muse. :: quietly walks away as this post is way off topic ::

 

[jonks]

Originally posted by: ProfJohn

Originally posted by: sirjonk
All I see lately are articles from life long interrogators stating that torture doesn't work, and overall is just bad policy for multitudes of reasons. I haven't seen any interrogators come out and say torturing does work and is good policy. All we see is Giuliani idiotically comparing his late campaign nights with sleep deprivation, and Rummy saying he stands at his desk so that's the same as stress positions. How about the administration produces someone with credibility that says the methods we use in Guantanamo (that of course aren't torture because we don't torture) actually work.

Which explains why we are going around and torturing everyone we can right?

Obviously Bush and Co know that torture doesn't work, but they just keep doing it to piss off the liberals. :roll:

Find me an interrogator, not an O'Reilly/Hannity clone, not a Bush crony or subordinate, who says torturing is a good idea.

Go ahead, roll your eyes. Your government, the freaking US Government, carries out interrogations using methods employed by the Khmer Rouge, methods the Japanese were prosecuted and jailed for after WWII by the US as war crimes, and refers to it under the euphemism 'enhanced interrogation', a phrase coined by the nazis. Be proud.

And don't forget, while the righty pundits go on about how it's our duty to torture, Bush officially sticks to the semantics of "we don't torture", making Clinton's "is" conundrum laughable in comparison.

 

[fskimospy]

Originally posted by: ProfJohn

Originally posted by: sirjonk
All I see lately are articles from life long interrogators stating that torture doesn't work, and overall is just bad policy for multitudes of reasons. I haven't seen any interrogators come out and say torturing does work and is good policy. All we see is Giuliani idiotically comparing his late campaign nights with sleep deprivation, and Rummy saying he stands at his desk so that's the same as stress positions. How about the administration produces someone with credibility that says the methods we use in Guantanamo (that of course aren't torture because we don't torture) actually work.

Which explains why we are going around and torturing everyone we can right?

Obviously Bush and Co know that torture doesn't work, but they just keep doing it to piss off the liberals. :roll:

You are assuming that Bush and Co have the slightest idea what they are doing when it comes to this. In fact, the single most common condemnation I've heard from experienced interrogators is that they just had no clue how this stuff was actually done, and they thought they were doing things correctly.

They weren't torturing because they are evil (well, maybe Cheney enjoys it... haha), they were originally doing it because they were too ignorant to know any better. If you look at CIA policies, Army policies, etc, most of them have either 100% outlawed torture or have outlawed it barring some sort of extremely high level approval. This is Bush and Co. realizing their mistake.

The reason they are fighting to keep the ability to torture now also has very little to do with torture itself. It has everything to do with their definition of executive power and the possible consequences of admitting that what they were doing up until recently was a gross violation of international treaties/federal law.

 

[StageLeft]

His prewar weapons of mass destruction deceptions were a ruse to convince Iran - whom he feared - that he had an arsenal.

This is interesting because I came up with this a recently (I'm sure others had, but I hadn't read about it ). I wondered why Saddam, with no WMD was not compliant and it seemed that he had to balance giving enough satisfaction to the UN while having enough mystery around it all that his foes would have thought he might have WMD. It was a gamble that didn't work, but it explains why he did it.