re: #29 Killgore Trout

The problem is it’s a complex field of study, and it’s never been done (for obvious reasons) in an academic environment. There’s plenty of practices that existed for hundreds of years in the military, in medicine, in farming, etc. that were either useless or actually harmful, despite the fact that intelligent, honest, and thoughtful people were in those professions.

Furthermore, again: I have never seen any actual writer on interrogation indicate that torture was ever a superior tactic, in any situation, to others. I have read the opposite. So when you cite its use, most of those who used it were not actually interested in the result; the Soviets, the Khemer Rouge, the Nazis, etc. etc., were as interested in the use of torture as cruelty as they were as a technique.

From my limited actual knowledge, my friends who are cops consider the cops who try to physically abuse or threaten suspects in order to get info the stupidest and most useless of cops. They say that their greatest weapon is the subject’s urge to confess, either to lift guilt or to defiantly claim their place in the world, to assert that they matter. Other techniques involve co-opting them by becoming buddy-buddy, in appealing to vanity, etc. etc. They all consider roughing people up to be worse than doing nothing.

Obviously, a professional terrorist or agent is a different kettle of fish. But the famous Nazi interrogator who actually had great success was the one who didn’t torture, and our interrogators relied almost exclusively on befriending and co-opting prisoners.