The real question is why torture? Why this incompetitant, bumbling, make-it-up-as-you-go approach to getting information? That's the part I have trouble believing.

We've taught Contras and others how to extract information....and we haven't a clue? We looking to Nazis and the Spanish Inquistion for inspiration....but I don't think of Nazis when I think of interrogation techniques.

Because it wasn't organized overtly from the top. The people ultimately responsible for this torture didn't want their fingerprints on it. So they didn't hand out detailed rules saying do this and then do that. Instead they removed the rules saying what the low level guys couldn't do and told them to use their own judgment and get creative to get results.

This whole thing speaks to me of an EMOTIONAL issue. Someone wants to make someone SUFFER. I still subscribe to the opinion that an interrogator has NO EMOTION for this subject. He's extracting information; anything else get's in the way of that.

Another side effect of the way it was done. The judgment was left in the hands of low level soldiers and interrogators who had experience in the field with being shot at and attacked by insurgents. These are not the people you want making objective decisions about how to treat people.

(That's why I believe more in truth serum and others drugs.)

Considering the degree to which the US and other countries don't use them, I've come to the conclusion that the drug method doesn't work as well as books and movies suggests.

Jay