"ALL CAPS IN DEFENSE OF LIBERTY IS NO VICE."

Thursday, January 06, 2005

Interrogating or Conversing: which will yield more information from Jihadoterrorists?

"... district attorneys and police detectives routinely invoke the possibility of harsh criminal penalties to get criminals to confess. Federal prosecutors in New York have even been known to remind suspects that they are more likely to keep their teeth and not end up as sex slaves by pleading to a federal offense, thus avoiding New York City’s Rikers Island jail. Using such a method against an al-Qaida jihadist, by contrast, would be branded a serious humanitarian breach."

IMHO: Interrogators who cannot use coercive techniques on terrorists will not get as much information as ones that can and do. Disallowing all coercive techniques in order to banish torture is nothing more than throwing the baby out with the bathwater! Coercive techniques are part of the "arsenal" of a normal interrogation; they're the "stick" the "bad cop" uses when the "good cop's" "carrot" fails. In fact, they make each other MORE effective!

NOW... We all want the people in our armed forces to have the very best equipment. RIGHT?! SO... why do some - mostly naive hand-wringing idealists on the Left - want to "DISARM" our interrogators?! It makes NO SENSE!


And read MM everyday!

UPDATE 1/7: Lowry/NRO/the corner ("MORE ON INTERROGATION") has an example of coercive interrogation making a big difference.

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