re: #598 tatterdemalian

So the only reason you would support telling a captured Al-Qaeda member such a thing is because we’ve clearly and carefully informed them that we won’t actually do it? You do realize that reduces the threat to nothing more than a stupid joke, and renders it useless for actually extracting anything but bluster at best (and convincing, carefully rehearsed lies at worst) from the detainees they’re trying to interrogate?

No wonder the interrogators had to pretend to be Egyptians rather than Americans to get any useful information out of the detainees. Ah, but that’s “torture” and wrong too (and also useless now that Master of Interrogation Techniques Eric Holder has revealed it to the world).

But surely there has to be SOME way to extract actionable intelligence from detainees without violating their rights to privacy of information! The experts are resigning from the CIA rather than seeking them out just because they’re old, fossilized, and lazy, I’m sure.

Our children will have to actually butcher terrorists’ families before any terrorist will believe any threats American interrogators make, ever again. I doubt they will look fondly back on us for keeping our hands clean at the expense of theirs, especially when we didn’t actually have to torture anyone. All we had to do was not let the terrorists know that we wouldn’t resort to “torture,” and we couldn’t even manage that.

I don’t support telling a detainee that we will kill his children for the simple fact it’s not a good interrogation technique.

We have tortured detainees. Water boarding is torture.