From The Atlantic.

The Senate Intelligence Committee report released this week found that the CIA tortured terror suspects by, among other things, putting hummus in a man's anus, forcing suspects to stand on broken feet, and blasting detainees with songs such as "Rawhide" at loud volumes on repeat.

Many of the interrogators' actions were shocking and cruel, but some might argue (and some have argued) that torture is a necessary tool for extracting information. This, too, is dubious. The Senate investigation revealed that the CIA learned most of the valuable intelligence it gathered during this period through other means.

Military leaders have known about the pointlessness of torture for centuries. A quote by Napoleon, which was widely shared after the report's release, reads, "The barbarous custom of having men beaten who are suspected of having important secrets to reveal must be abolished. It has always been recognized that this way of interrogating men, by putting them to torture, produces nothing worthwhile. The poor wretches say anything that comes into their mind and what they think the interrogator wishes to know." The French leader wrote that in a letter in 1798.*

Still, there will always be terrorists in the world, and we will always need to pump them for information. So if we don't torture, what should we do instead?

Pretend to be their friends.

A study published this year by Jane Goodman-Delahunty, of Australia's Charles Sturt University, interviewed 34 interrogators from Australia, Indonesia, and Norway who had handled 30 international terrorism suspects, including potential members of the Sri Lankan extremist group Tamil Tigers and the Norwegian-based Islamist group Ansar al Ismal. Delahunty asked the interrogators what strategies they used to gain information and what the outcomes of each interrogation session were.

The winning technique, as BPS Research Digest notes, was immediately clear:

Quote

Disclosure was 14 times more likely to occur early in an interrogation when a rapport-building approach was used. Confessions were four times more likely when interrogators struck a neutral and respectful stance. Rates of detainee disclosure were also higher when they were interrogated in comfortable physical settings.

This isn't just theoretical, either. One former U.S. Army interrogator told PRI this week that he was able to break through to an Iraqi insurgent over a shared love of watching the TV show "24" on bootleg DVDs.

"He acknowledged that he was a big fan of Jack Bauer," he told PRI. "We made a connection there that ultimately resulted in him recanting a bunch of information that he had said in the past and actually giving us the accurate information because we had made that connection."

Delahunty notes in the study that even though rapport-building strategies, which included things like humor and expressing concern, were recognized as more effective, interrogators were still more likely to use hardball accusatory strategies when dealing with "high-value" detainees, perhaps because the nature of their crimes were considered too horrendous for buddy-buddy interviewing.

In another study highlighted by BPS, regular people were found to be more supportive of torture if they were told the suspect was a terrorist—but not because they thought the suspect had more information. Their support for torture, in other words, was rooted on a desire for payback, not intelligence.

Torture can either be viewed as a punishment or as a way to gain life-saving intelligence. International conventions prohibit the former. Psychology studies suggest it's ineffective at the latter. Which brings us, once again, back to the question: Why do it?

Torture is pretty useless and barbaric.

Napoleon was correct.  Mentally and physically destroy someone, and they'll do anything to stop the pain, including telling the torturers exactly to the letter what they want to know, even if the information may not be true.

But embrace the prisoner, humor them and act like a human rather than treating them as "the enemy", and they'll feed you information, gradually.

Quote from: Mr Psychologist on December 14, 2014, 06:04:25 PM

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putting hummus in a man's anus,

What the fuck is it with torturers and shoving things into people's anuses?
I mean seriously, you can't get much more closeted than this.

Did I forget to mention that I've changed my desired career?

Good.

Journalists are intellectual whores.

Quote from: Meta Cognition on December 14, 2014, 06:23:58 PM

Quote from: IcyWind on December 14, 2014, 06:17:20 PM

Quote from: Mr Psychologist on December 14, 2014, 06:04:25 PM

Quote

putting hummus in a man's anus,

What the fuck is it with torturers and shoving things into people's anuses?
I mean seriously, you can't get much more closeted than this.

Did I forget to mention that I've changed my desired career?

Good.

Journalists are intellectual whores.

Well when you put it that way...

Icy=whore confirmed?

The Senate Intelligence Committee report released this week found that the CIA tortured terror suspects by, among other things, putting hummus in a man's anus, forcing suspects to stand on broken feet, and blasting detainees with songs such as "Rawhide" at loud volumes on repeat.

So what's the difference between the CIA, the Nazi's and the Soviet Union when it comes to human life?

putting hummus in a man's anus,

Jokes on them if that's their fetish

Yes! We should give our enemies three meals and a cot, give them a sexy hot lady or man to have sexy time with, give them free internet and coffee.. That'll make them tell us everything we want to know!

inb4 armchair warriors try to deny facts

It doesn't deny the fact that torture is fun

Hanns Scharff was one of the best interrogators of WWII, and apart from putting mild fear into the POW's about the Gestapo he treated them well and as a result could get plenty of information.

An excerpt:

After a prisoner's fear had been allayed, Scharff continued to act as a good friend, including sharing jokes, homemade food items, and occasionally alcoholic beverages. Scharff was fluent in English and knowledgeable about British customs and some American ones, which helped him to gain the trust and friendship of many of his prisoners. Some high profile prisoners were treated to outings to German airfields (one POW was even allowed to take a BF 109 fighter for a trial run), tea with German fighter aces, swimming pool excursions, and luncheons, among other things. Prisoners were treated well medically at the nearby Hohe Mark Hospital, and some POWs were occasionally allowed to visit their comrades at this hospital for company's sake, as well as the better meals provided there. Scharff was best known for taking his prisoners on strolls through the nearby woods, first having them swear an oath of honor that they would not attempt to escape during their walk. Scharff chose not to use these nature walks as a time to directly ask his prisoners obvious military-related questions, but instead relied on the POWs' desire to speak to anyone outside of isolated captivity about informal, generalized topics. Prisoners often volunteered information the Luftwaffe had instructed Scharff to acquire, frequently without realizing they had done so.

And seeing as he was repatriated and moved to America after the war and elaborated on his technique to the military, you'd think the CIA would know that just beating the shite out a suspected terrorist and humiliating them wouldn't work. If anything, holding back information would be more ingrained into the victim's mind, seeing as it could be their last "Fuck you" to the interrogator.