http://www.americablog.com/2008/08/expert-says-torture-not-just.html Expert says Torture "not just ineffective, but counterproductive"
Joe Sudbay (DC) · 8/08/2008 03:09:00 AM ET · Link
Meet Steven Kleinman. He worked for the United States government conducting interrogations who wants to know "why the president's legal advisers were so intent on rationalizing the violation of longstanding law in order to adopt an approach –- coercion -- that experienced interrogation practitioners agree is not just ineffective, but counterproductive." Kleinman did a Q & A over at Neiman Watchdog.
The guy cuts through the Bush administration's b.s. about torture -- it doesn't work. Fascinating and thanks to Dan Froomkin for sending this our way:
Setting aside the moral arguments against torture, the considerable time and energy spent in establishing a legal justification for harsher methods, such as the so-called "enhanced interrogation techniques," would have seemed a more reasonable course of action if substantial evidence existed that these methods were objectively of superior operational effectiveness than more traditional approaches and/or had proven necessary in the context of a new dimension of conflict.
The CIA, the agency exclusively authorized to operate under this separate set of standards, did not -- and could not -- offer objective arguments that would justify such a conclusion. Prior to 9/11, the CIA had no interrogation capability of its own nor had it conducted research into effective means of conducting interrogations since its ill-fated venture into the application of drugs and psychological stress in the 1960s and 1970s. Instead, they were new to the game. And there was no scientific underpinning for the agency’s decision to embrace tactics that would ultimately coalesce into a checklist-driven process supervised by behavioral scientists. Even the anecdotal evidence offered as proof of the efficacy of enhanced interrogation techniques was never subjected to independent, objective assessment. In sum, it was effective only because they said it was effective.
In contrast, considerable evidence -- along with the many years of operational experience by the nation's most accomplished interrogators -- strongly suggested that coercive methods not only failed to consistently obtain reliable intelligence, but that such tactics are largely counterproductive in that they stiffen the resolve of detainees under questioning and undermine the stature of the U.S. on the world stage.
It's going to take a long time to get over what the Bush administration did to this country. Bush turned us into torturers. That not only destroyed our image, it didn't work.
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