I'm not talking about waterboarding or what have you. I guess I'm just puzzled that things like threats & slaps are being rolled in with waterboarding. Maybe threats & slaps are not the most effective method, sure- that doesn't really matter.

It just seems like people are shocked to find fundamentally abusive/manipulative behavior going on at all. Virtually any form of extracting information from an unwilling informant is going to be. Feeding them lies to make them lose hope ("We've captured your co-conspirators") is abusive. Cozying up to them with donuts and backrubs is manipulative. Practically by definition, interrogation on unwilling informants cannot be some friendly, respectful thing.

Hanns Scharf would disagree.

"Scharff was opposed to physically abusing prisoners to obtain information. Learning on the job, Scharff instead relied upon the Luftwaffe's approved list of techniques, which mostly involved making the interrogator seem as if he is his prisoner's greatest advocate while in captivity."

And this guy was successful as well.

"Scharff's approach has been admiringly cited by top US interrogators, such as Ali Soufan"

Those are still abusive relationships, that he established with his prisoners. Just not physically abusive.

What is the most effective?

Anyway, that's really counter-intuitive. I mean, I guess I could deal with pain, but losing body parts, skin or eyes? I would talk pretty fast.

Torture has been shown to be a reasonably good (though not always effective) means of getting people to tell torturers things that they think the torturers want to hear -- whatever the tortured person thinks is most likely to lead to the present cessation of the torture.

Its also been shown to be a fairly poor technique, compared to other alternatives, to get accurate, actionable information.

As the Senate report itself notes, this was the conclusion of the CIA's own work on interrogation techniques prior to 9/11, which was disregarded in the aftermath of 9/11.

The White House is apparently not taking a side in the debate over whether it works or not.

Which frankly makes me think they believe it does. The easy political win is to say it doesn't, and they aren't taking it.

https://twitter.com/peterbakernyt/status/542382617711370240

"Obama official: White House won’t take sides between CIA, which says interrogations worked, and Senate, which says they didn’t."

Sure wish Obama could just grow a pair already.

Basically, the most effective means is to create a rapport with the subject, and if treated with compassion and respect, eventually some will come around to their captor's side and reveal whatever information they have.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanns_Scharff

http://www.k-state.edu/actr/2010/12/20/suspect-interrogation...

People will say anything to get torture to stop. The interrogators will get the information they want, but they will get so much more bad information made up on the spot to stop the suffering, it's impossible to distinguish between actual intel and the subject telling the interrogator what they want to hear.

It gets even worse when the subject doesn't actually know anything useful. Waterboard most people and they will confess to anything they think will make it stop.

We know that people confess to crimes they didn't commit - even if they're not being tortured.

http://nymag.com/news/crimelaw/68715/

Sure, it worked great during the Inquisition. Evidently they killed a lot of Satanists, witches and wizards. It must've worked -- there don't seem to be any around.