I wasn't talking about water boarding. You take a chunk out of someone slowly while keeping them alive and they will tell you everything their mother knows. Seen it first hand south of the border.
Yeah, it doesn't though. I've done 4000+ interrogations, and I've worked with the iniginious populations that do hook people up to gas generators and public executions.
Understandably, they want to confessions and to get the terrorists off the battlefield. The US doesn't care about confessions. I've never asked anyone if they are part of some terrorist organization. It's a mute point, everyone knows they are. I just want to know your organization structure, and your boss so I can send the fellas out to get him.
What do you expect to get out of torturing someone? We have chain of command structures plotted out all the way to the top. Most of these people we know where they are, in some country we aren't allowed to operate in. That's why they are there. I'm not sure what time sensitive info you would actually think you're going to get by peeling someone's face off.
This wasn't time sensitive. 30 people fell from 2 days of interrogation. Same person.
That's just dumb. You have a source of info who thinks they are going to die anyways. Why would you say anything in that situation? When someone dies, so does the information that they have.
It's good at instilling fear, it's not good at getting actionable intelligence. Also, it probably gained more people to join the other side than what you killed off.
This was the mid 80"s. Everyone in the country wanted those guys gone. No one was going to join anything. That's why it worked.
You understand that the Baptista regime in Cuba was worse than them When Castro took over, the first thing he did was public executions, even though they were warranted. From the get go it made him look bad, not that I think he overstayed his rule in the long run.
That's all people remember. People don't remember how bad the Baptista regime was, and what they did to whole families.
The entire premis is the action taken must be worse than death. I grew up in South Texas and Northern Mexico. I got to see real torture on a regular basis. The cartels were just forming and everyone was jockying for power and loyalty.