They say they were able to get prisoners to talk without coercion or torture of any sort, through techniques like playing chess.

you can't trust information you beat out of them.  
It's easier to cross-examine information out of them.  It's easier than you'd think, and it's the only way you're gonna get details.  In the end, intel is about correlating data anyway.  You never say something is true because somebody says so - you say, this is a report and work from there.

That said, I don't think there's any issue of morality in bugging a cell or inspecting their gear.  We're not talking about morality, we're talking about what works.


-- Modified on 10/7/2007 3:47:30 PM

like my dad.

the level of "dedication to the cause" is operative...


ooops, that was to the thread in general and not "at you" Dr....fwiw


-- Modified on 10/7/2007 4:17:52 PM

usually fought to the death because they were so regimented that they simply did not imagine life outside their culture.

But once captured, even if they had been unconscious, they often regarded themselves as dead and separated from their culture, and often spilled their guts for cigarettes.  I've seen reports of Jap POWs riding along in bombers to point out their own positions. (not from this site which is a mod, other sources)

Go figure.

From http://worldwar2database.com/html/japanpow.htm

"The small numbers of prisoners is shocking. On Tarawa, only 17 Japanese were taken; many surrendered only after being knocked unconscious by gunfire. Many more Korean laborers survived the battle. Many prisoners were only captured when they were unable to resist due to wounds or incapacitation.

   Once captured, they were reported as dead to their families and many Japanese POWs chose to aid the Allied effort. Prisoners provided the Allies with important information, sometimes directing bombers against their former comrades."


-- Modified on 10/7/2007 4:56:04 PM

see the film "Guantanamo" with my liberal girlfriend and what a bunch of crap. I will only say that Washington's Army did not do torture and that has been the mandate of the United States Army and is part of the UCMJ.

The soldiers you mentioned in your article never specifically mentioned the techniques they object to. Also you must understand this war we have with the jihadists is unlike any war we have ever been involved in. Of course we will make mistakes as in any new type of warfare.

But make no mistake, these jihadists are not boy scouts as portrayed in film. They are out to kill us.

I'm only liberal so I can get into their pants

usually there are one hell of a lot of, um, misunderstandings all around.

I think it's pretty hard to claim that this is a "new" type of warfare.   Counterinsurgency has been around as long as warfare, and there has been A LOT of 20th century experience that should be fresh in everybody's minds.

If you mean TWAT, that is not particularly difficult to get your head around, if you have one.   The most obvious guess is that the GOP figured a heavy dose of BS would be handy if not necessary, so they had to call it a war.

Problem is that people believe shit.  Obviously, we are trying to run down al Qaeda, who have no territory or people to defend, and are not an established state.  They're more like international criminals, or pirates, than warriors, and if we assume that every raghead is a jihadist, we've just made a billion enemies.

When you go into a counterinsurgency situation, you will inevitably sweep up a lot of innocents.  if you cannot justify yourself to them, they and their relatives and neighbors will become insurgent symps.  It is INCREDIBLY hard to avoid this, and if your troops do not speak the language, you got problems.

The basic issue is that counterinsurgency is the border between politics and war, and you need a coherent plan to coordinate both, and for example, you can't have privateers like Blackwater running around doing as they please.  

But shit, we still don't even know WTF we're doing there.  I'm beginning to think that the lon term rationale is spreading American values (at the point of a gin, which makes me wonder how much the neo-cons understand about guns or American values) and by the way, we'll enforce an oil law, converting the military budget to private profits.
WMDs is of course just BS.

seen a POW interrogated live, nor seen a person tortured.  But I have a bit of experience questioning people, both hostile & friendly, and my observation is that you can get all sorts of things out of people when they don't expect it, usually by corroborating information.   They don't have to be friendly; all they have to do is make the mistake of talking, and sooner or later, you'll trip them and they'll usually feel the need to cover themselves.

But if a person even FEELS under pressure, they will often subconsciously distort their answers.  I assume that it's more true when there is fear of torture.  Women flip out all the time over the weirdest things.   I don't think it'd do any good to torture a woman, because so many of them are so whacked out most of the time anyway.

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

WWII wasn't dealing with the same conscience that we are today. There is absolutely no comparing even the German Third Reich with the jihad movement in the Middle East.

Unless you have spent time on the ground in the region please don't judge their techniques... especially not with an outdated measure of WWII interrogators. (*LMAO- that's like sending a kindergarten teacher to police Compton*)

You have no idea what you are comparing nor does any of the 80/90 year old WWII interrogators that made the foolish comments. Try playing chess or Ping-Pong with any commoner living within the arena and you might not make it past setting out your little game.

What a load of crap!!! -Maybe those that haven't witnessed up close and first hand what is really happening (*in a country we have no business being in*)  SHOULD just keep their outdated concepts to themselves......-or- maybe they could volunteer and let congress outsource them and their "expert" methods to the region *LOL* now that would be a quick answer to their "standards that remain a source of pride and honor"

I'm sure neither you nor any of these "honorable few" have any idea of what our guys are facing on the ground in Iraq today, let alone in the caves of Afghanistan. I think as an American, a more fitting response would be just to say thank you and let the warriors of today do their job.

Eighty and Ninety year old men giving advise on how to conducted interrogations on Nazi's from the 1940's, oh yeah guy... that is exactly what our guys on the ground need to listen to *LMAO- thanks for reminding me what is going on back stateside!

much?  Do you think the towelheads have something that the Nazis, the Japs, the VC, the Chicoms, our own criminal population, don't have?

Or maybe your generation is just discovering the surface of this?

It might be smart to listen to the old folks.

I think a few of the critics need to understand what it is they are now dealing with.

-And NO, the Nazis the Japs the VC or even our own criminal element didn't have generations of embedded hatred based on religious and spiritual beliefs. This is a war that has been in existence since the beginning of time. It isn't about gov'ts and policy. That is the difference that most don't understand.

These: "old folks" also weren't facing generations of experienced fighters. Negative on the listening to outdated advise (*by the way, I also don't let my grandparents tell me how to utilize the internet either- common sense applies to that one*) outdated and uninformed has no place to criticize the efforts of our guys on the ground in war zones... sorry, not buying your logic. I respect my elders but sometimes even experienced older people need to realize their own short comings. 1940's interrogation techniques aren't what is needed in today's battle!!

by wanting to throwe egg on Bush, and the admins face everytime they can.

can you say murtha?

Martin Luther wasn't anti-semetic, the Japs didn't have cultural issues dating back to the beginning of time, and muslims are going to behave entirely differently from all the rest of people, because, well, because they're muslim.  The towels squeeze the bloodflow to the brain.

Koreans, for example, haven't been cutting each others' throats up and down that peninsula for all of recorded time, and neither Somalis nor Filipinos are particularly murderous.  Your experience is unique because you have no basis for comparison.

Some cops beat the shit out of suspects.  That always makes them tell the truth, not whatever it takes to make the beating stop.  It works especially well when the suspect is too fucking dumb to know.

Other cops mess with their minds.  But like you say, these people are unique in the world.  Their heads just don't work like anybody else, they don't have any regard for anything.  Not at all like those kamikazes.  Well, actually the first recorded kamikaze was Capt Fleming diving into Mikuma at Midway, but that's all different.

Old folks just don't know much at all.  It's a whole new world - at least for you.

and it sure wouldn't take him.

This administration fucking walked into a carton of eggs while everybody was screaming at them to stop, and now thinks that the pointers & laughers are to blame.

Fucking pathetic.   How could we possibly get such a stupid crew?

Well, it's not all stupidity.  They know where their bread is buttered.

"""everybody was screaming at them to stop,""

uhhh, no. everyone was'nt screaming at the topp of their lungs...though they claim to have now.

our previous enemies namely:

1. They do not follow any living leader, they follow a violent strain of Islam. In our war with Japan, when the Emperor told his Kamikaze pilots to lay down their arms, they did.

2. They do not follow nor respect any country's laws or borders. Osama bin Laden for example, has no country. Saudi Arabia threw him out years ago.

3. They are not fighting for territory or oil or any economic gain, they are fighting for Allah. For this they are willing to "sacrfice" their lives.

4. They truly think we of the western nations are evil and their on the side of good.

5. They will not give up, they will never give up until we either: a) Covert to Islam b) Die

In the meantime jacko, show some class we have a lady in the house.

1)  You're missing some class here.  Maybe it was the class on civics.  Disagreement is not lack of class.  Equating disagreement to lack of class is indeed lack of class.

2)  When a "lady" comes into an issue, she is estopped from asserting her gender to prove her point.

3) Your points suggest that you may have in fact misunderstood the problem.  This is not a nation we are fighting.  You choose to believe it is a religion.  I'd rather focus on the people who actually plotted this, if for no other reason than it makes fewer enemies.

4)  I could go on for a long time about a lot of history, but let me point out just ONE historical fallacy of yours.  When the Emperor told the Japs to lay down their arms, we were picking Japanese survivors out of the jungles DECADES LATER.  Yes, they had heard the orders, and didn't believe them.   On the other hand, I don't know of any cases where a recognized jihad leader has given an order to lay down arms.   DOn't let facts get in your way.

5)  Show some class.  Respect your elders' experience and advice.  They've been there, and done that.

nor is thinking you know it all.

IMHO, the political leadership has mis-sold and misunderstood this for their own purposes, in obvious ways.

This is not a conventional war, nor are their specific territories nor populations to fight over. Obviously.  Yet, they insist on fighting a conventional war, with obviously poor results.

Running amuck thru the Muslim world is going to create the very hostility that bin Laden hoped to trigger.  He WANTS us to take on the entire muslim world, instead of targeting the specific criminals.

Now, your argument that these people are "different" and "fanatical" is really sort of lame when you hold them up to for example the Japanese of WW2.

This problem is controllable, IF we have half-assed smart people on the job, who are trying to protect our nation, instead of feather their own bed.  

Put a bunch of draft-dodging dry drunks in the White House, and they would shoot their own mother in the foot for a larger yacht.

We have been through this before, and so have many others.  Read Petraus' own COIN manual, which draws heavily on our experience in my war, Vietnam.  Notice that our policy deviates from his own policy advice, and ask yourself why.

If you want to talk about fanatics, find out about the Moros on Samar.


If there were a dozen muslims, we could blow them all away and never miss them, if that's what you want.  But there aren't a dozen, and it will take a few thousand nukes, and a few years.  Again, if that's what you want.

My suggestion is to calm down and use your head.  

than me, but you always sound like a creaky old man, and out of energy!!

Some day when I have more time, we can revisit this and dissect it.

who had to deal with the IRA, within the time of my own memory.   And you might talk to them about the tactics they used, and the responses they got.

Freud himself claimed that the "Irish are one race  to whom psychoanalysis is of no use."  

Yeah, the Brits did indeed eventually subdue part of Ireland.  Took them about 500 years to secure 6 of 32 counties, and the way they finally did it was a political compromise between the indigenous personnel and the Scots invaders who had been imported back in the 17th & 18th centuries.

But of course throughout Irish history, there was never any warfare or brutality, and when St Patrick threw out the snakes, he blessed all the women and their descendants with endless peace & harmony.   The Brits will confirm that any day.

Not at all, I just stated my beliefs and the idiotic statement that challenging any participating in the jihad movement to games played in 1940 is just as legit as claiming monopoly is the answer.

In so far as knowing everything- I never claimed that but I can assure you I am far more aware of what is happening in the region that most that are suggesting 1940's tactics used by 80 and 90 year old men who fought a war once upon a time.
I'm been on the ground in the area and I have witnessed the hatred and the anger that is the product of generations of brainwashing.

To suggest that a better way of accomplishing an extraction of information by playing chess and checkers is proof that the contributing parties have never been among the Islamic extremists who have but one goal in their life: To honor Allah by killing as many infidels as possible. The jihad fighters that need interrogating to gain insight into which American city is targeted for attack have no interest in playing any board games or even communicating anything but Die infidel.

I will concede but one point: you have no idea what is going on in "that war" and suggesting a better way of fighting it is not in your realm of knowledge. We can agree to disagree only because some of those very men who are performing those "horrible" interrogations were willing to fight the jihad on foreign soil as opposed to bringing it stateside. I just say thank you and you question their methods- we disagree! kisses ~T


PS- my elders live happy on an estate in a small southern town that was purchased by me- so I think I have shown my respect for my elders on more occasions than one. I still don't want an uninformed group of over the hill old warriors to try to fight a war that they have no clue of. If you deem that as no respect for my elders then fine, I think it is common sense. I'm blessed because my elders know when their time has passed and they are willing to pass the torch of protecting our country on to those more capable.

more or less fanatical or vicious than (1) the IRA?  (2) the Imperial Japanese armed forces?  
Do you think there might be other examples?


Do you really think the fellow who talked about playing chess was talking about playing games - like monopoly, or chess?  

Does it occur to you that any sort of conflict might eventually be a mind game?   And if this POW expects one thing, that it might be smartest to do something else?

Now, I question people a lot.  I personally find that you get the truth by piecing together things they let drop when they don't expect it.  IOW, I learn as much about people by talking to them about their barber, or the food, as asking them directly what I want to know.  They know to resist direct questions, and of course nobody could just refuse to talk until they died.  Well, maybe excepting the Irish.

Does it occur to you that a person might be angry about something other than brainwashing?  And that if your cousin had been shot, you lost your job, your town is a fucking mess, that you might swear Allahu Akbar or worse at the 1st stranger blowing through town?

Imagine, for example, that you saw a little girl hit by napalm running naked down the road.  You know of course that the napalm was aimed at the commies.  But could you imagine somebody being pissed about that little girl being hit?  

Let me toss out something else.

Let's imagine the biggest asshole in the county was elected mayor in your town.  Let's say a KKK guy, like happened a lot in the midwest in the 20s; and the Natl Guard and Feddle gummint was so busy they couldn't do anything about it.

And let's imagine the Mexicans came to save you from this idiot, and depose him.  

But while they were doing that, they sorta blew the town apart.

Now, how long do you think you would be grateful to the Mexicans?  How long would you want them to hang around?

I'm just asking here that you put the shoe on the other foot.

Of course, it could be that these aren't real humans, and they're suiciders, sort of like the Kamikazes, except that they're the first people to discover suicide as a weapon.  The ancient secrets of the Japanese, you know?  And the Irish too, I guess.

And they've been brainwashed with generations of hatred, so much that when a US soldier walks into town, it's like a LA cop walking into Watts, you know?  Of course black folks are just brainwashed into generations of hatred, and US soldiers weren't there until a few years ago.  Saddam must have been brainwashing them all this time, and before that it was the Brits and the Ottomans.  For that matter, it wasn't but about a century ago that our NATO allies the Turks ran that place.   Why would the Turks brainwash them against us?


You know, of all the people I've heard of or worked with, I do honestly think that the Irish have got to be the absolute scariest.  Because I know a little about the history, and I do personally know a lot of Irishmen, and my own blood is a fair lot of Irish.  There are some people who can hold a grudge, and they are willing to starve themselves, and that's just about as mean as a man can be. I would much rather have that fellow on my side, than be fighting him - even if he's often very bull-headed.  I want you to show me somebody meaner and crazier and more stubborn, than a fellow who will starve himself to death.

Now if I had to guess, I would think that you probably think that your experience is unique.  Of course, that could be true.  But you have to go with the odds, and I just don't think that would be the way to bet.

Believe it or not there are those of us who appreciate commentary from a female perspective. You do write well, you may have even succeeded in charming JackO. :)

this is the internet, you know.

Oh, but let me ask one thing from you here:  would you warn me when you're going to do the White Knight thing?   My stomach can handle 2 week old Navy coffee, but that just makes me retch.

-- Modified on 10/11/2007 9:09:33 PM

I would if I could.... but alas my time just doesn't permit the indulgence. I had to comment on this particular thread because my attention had just been directed at the article referenced.

I'm actually abroad at the moment touring and my Internet Service is very limited-

Thanks for remembering that this is still a site primarily devoted to men seeking women for physical encounters (*or fictitious accounts of LOL*)  Sometimes this particular board seems to stray F-arrrrr away from that!  kisses ~T

sorry for the modify- the link might give you an idea of where I've been and where I am


-- Modified on 10/12/2007 2:30:06 PM

the jihadis are (1) unique in history, (2) because of generations of hatred, and (3) will not stop until they die, so presumably (4) we can only beat the truth out of them.   (5)  WW2 was completely different and outmoded, because the Germans were what, chivalrous?


Let's think about this one thing at a time.   First of all, before Saddam, these people were ruled by the Brits; and before that, the Ottomans, ie, the Turks.  That goes back a few generations.

So, do you suppose these people have say more generations of hatred than American blacks?  You know, the people that can't be controlled by the LAPD?

How long does it take to instill fanaticism?  Well, I used to train 18 year olds into Marines in 90 days.

Now, as I've pointed out, there are fanatics, and there are fanatics.  The Japanese planned suicide by an entire Kamikaze corps.  And they were sure some pretty mean mofos toward anybody they ran into.  Was that generations of hatred?  Hell, they didn't even KNOW about Americans until Perry sailed into Tokyo Bay a century before.   And they sure seemed to adapt quickly enough.

Then of course there are the Irish, the ones that Freud wrote off as incurable.  These people make a HABIT out of starving themselves to death in protests.  Whole platoons of them spread shit all over the inside of the Maze, just to make the Brits sick.  And for that matter, the Brits were pretty inspiring themselves.

Now as for the Nazis, the people we played chess with.  These people made a habit of gassing children.  


So here's what I'm thinking.  I'm thinking that if the Iraqis impressed you, god help us if you ran into some Irishmen.