Ex-Interrogators Say Human Connection, Not Torture, Yields Results

[struggle4progress]

By Kevin Matthews
Senior Writer
UCLA Today

Information from U.S. military interrogations led to the capture of deposed Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in 2003 and to the killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian-born instigator of a campaign of suicide bombings and beheadings, in a 2006 airstrike inside Iraq.

The two interrogators who were most responsible for sealing those most-wanted fugitives' fates explained on Friday, April 24, to a Melnitz Hall audience how they did it and why torturing the people in their custody would never have gotten the same results. The event was sponsored by the Burkle Center for International Relations at UCLA and the School of Theater, Film and Television’s Program in Film, Television and Digital Media ...

Over five weeks in Tikrit, Army Staff Sergeant Eric Maddox, who has interrogated hundreds of Iraqis, identified and followed an enemy chain of command that led up to Hussein and ultimately to his underground hideout on Dec. 13, 2003. To get information at each link in that chain, Maddox said he had to win the trust of a detained informant and to convince that person that the interrogator would protect his loved ones.

"For him to trust me, imagine if I tortured the guy," said Maddox, adding, "Under no circumstances would torture work" ...

http://www.international.ucla.edu/article.asp?parentid=107697

[Juche]

1. Makes you wonder about the torture apologists

The thing is they honestly don't even seem to care that torture isn't the only thing that works to get intel, and that it can backfire. They just seem to enjoy it because their lives are ruled by fear and torture is a form of violence. It is very unsettling to have so many people so high up in politics and the media support massive human rights abuses and be totally indifferent to whether they are even helping them achieve their goals or not. I wouldn't support torture even if it did work, but the fact that the right wing doesn't even care that torture isn't effective and still wants to do it is frightening.


These right wing authoritarians are so driven by paranoia, aggression and fear that they'll destroy the constitution if they have to. They have to be stopped.

[stillcool]

2. I think they're so full of themselves..

and have gotten away with so much shit, that they think they and this country are invincible..because of their military. I haven't figured out who it is our military works for, but I don't think it's for us.

[MarianJack]

3. Many of the Interrogators got info from the Nazis @ Nuremburg by...

...playing chess with them.

Of course, a sadist like cheney would never approve of chess, and bush probably thinks that "chess" is what you ask a woman to show you when you're drunk.

[struggle4progress]

4. WWII veteran Nazi interrogators denounced Bush's Torture techniques

http://crooksandliars.com/2007/10/07/wwii-veteran-nazi-interrogators-denounced-bushs-torture-techniques/

I don't think the chess story was about the Nuremberg defendants, but about ordinary soldiers and career military men as POWs. The Nuremberg defendants were diehard true-believer Nazis, and when they went on trial the prosecutors weren't looking for information from them but were trying them for crimes that were well-documented by film, paper records, and various atrocity survivors

[MarianJack]

5. Please Pardon my well intentioned mistake...

...and thank you for the correction.

It's amazing how the media was all over the WWII vets denunciation of the bushies. OOOPS, Never mind.

PEACE! :patriot:

[struggle4progress]

6. You don't owe me an apology. Some of my posts contain inaccuracies, too: when you find them,

please correct them :toast:

[MarianJack]

7. I can only say 1 thing in response.

:patriot: !

PEACE!