Here’s a few rules I do know:

Never post a source in its entirety (copyright laws);
Give full credit to your source (name, etc., and link if possible)
Other things I don’t need to tell you, like no profanity or character assassination, etc.

To include a video or picture in your diary you need to install flickr I installed it but can’t yet make it work. (duh)

Go for it!

This has got to get out, burqa. I’m very serious. You are obviously a very skilled writer and researcher, therefore I wish you would write diaries and not let your comments just be read by a few. (Now anyone who Googles for interrogation, or interrogation methods will see our article. Pappy deserves to regain his rightful place as ‘the best of the best’, let’s me-’n-you see that it happens, o.k.?

I’m fighting with my printer so I can use your later comments and names. It prints out so small I need a microscope a foot thick! I’ve read the instructions but can’t get my print dialog box out of ‘default’ choices. Oh well, have to dream up Plan B.

Thanks for all you do, burqa.

“I should have felt triumphant when I returned from Iraq in August 2006. Instead, I was worried and exhausted. My team of interrogators had successfully hunted down one of the most notorious mass murderers of our generation, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq and the mastermind of the campaign of suicide bombings that had helped plunge Iraq into civil war. But instead of celebrating our success, my mind was consumed with the unfinished business of our mission: fixing the deeply flawed, ineffective and un-American way the U.S. military conducts interrogations in Iraq. I’m still alarmed about that today.

I’m not some ivory-tower type; I served for 14 years in the U.S. Air Force, began my career as a Special Operations pilot flying helicopters, saw combat in Bosnia and Kosovo, became an Air Force counterintelligence agent, then volunteered to go to Iraq to work as a senior interrogator. What I saw in Iraq still rattles me — both because it betrays our traditions and because it just doesn’t work….

… Amid the chaos, four other Air Force criminal investigators and I joined an elite team of interrogators attempting to locate Zarqawi. What I soon discovered about our methods astonished me. The Army was still conducting interrogations according to the Guantanamo Bay model: Interrogators were nominally using the methods outlined in the U.S. Army Field Manual, the interrogators’ bible, but they were pushing in every way possible to bend the rules — and often break them. I don’t have to belabor the point; dozens of newspaper articles and books have been written about the misconduct that resulted. These interrogations were based on fear and control; they often resulted in torture and abuse.

I refused to participate in such practices, and a month later, I extended that prohibition to the team of interrogators I was assigned to lead. I taught the members of my unit a new methodology — one based on building rapport with suspects, showing cultural understanding and using good old-fashioned brainpower to tease out information. I personally conducted more than 300 interrogations, and I supervised more than 1,000. The methods my team used are not classified (they’re listed in the unclassified Field Manual), but the way we used them was, I like to think, unique. We got to know our enemies, we learned to negotiate with them, and we adapted criminal investigative techniques to our work (something that the Field Manual permits, under the concept of “ruses and trickery”). It worked. Our efforts started a chain of successes that ultimately led to Zarqawi….
….Our new interrogation methods led to one of the war’s biggest breakthroughs: We convinced one of Zarqawi’s associates to give up the al-Qaeda in Iraq leader’s location. On June 8, 2006, U.S. warplanes dropped two 500-pound bombs on a house where Zarqawi was meeting with other insurgent leaders…”
- from, “Torture’s the Wrong Answer: There’s a Smarter Way,” by Matthew Alexander (pseudonym) Washington Post, November 30, 2008, page B1

One book that gives insight is, THE INTERROGATORS Task Force 500 and America’s Secret War Against al Qaeda, by Chris Mackey and Greg Miller (Back Bay Books, 2004)
Mackey commanded interrogators in Afghanistan.
On pages 31-32, Mackey describes his training at Fort Huachuca, Arizona:
“Staff Sergeant Casey, our senior instructor, hammered home the idea that prisoners being tortured or mentally coerced will say anything, absolutely anything, to stop the pain. All of the instructors told us stories of the experiences of Army interrogators working in Vietnam alongside South Vietnamese units that would do the most unspeakable things to prisoners – take two of them up in a helicopter and shove one out the door, torture one of the prisoner’s relatives right in front of him – and the squeals of anguish and false information that would flow. The goal of interrogation isn’t just to get prisoners to talk, our instructors stressed, it’s to get them to tell the truth.”Mackey goes on to say the famous photo of the Saigon police chief shooting the VC prisoner in the head with a revolver.
“This just hardens the enemy against us……This is not the way we do business”
and on page 33:
“Later on, as we got farther along and started practicing interrogations in the booths, instructors loved to bait us to step over the line. Even students overheard by an instructor expressing macho admiration for this or that torture technique were given a failing mark for the day. If there was any suspicion on the instructors’ part about the restraint of a student, the offender was dismissed from the program.”

On page 477 Mackey writes”
“The reason the United States should not torture prisoners is not because it doesn’t work. It is simply because it is wrong. It dehumanizes us, undermines our cause, and, over the long term, breeds more enemies of the United States than coercive interrogation methods will ever allow us to capture.”

Peter Bauer:
“I conducted interrogation operations and training, and served as an interrogator near the front lines during Operation Desert Storm…. I know the techniques in the field manual work, and I know torture isn’t as effective…I did resistance-to-interrogation training for NATO forces. We simulated the sort of abuse they could expect…This treatment is quite similar to the sort of techniques described as the CIA’s “alternative interrogation procedures.” We invariably obtained more reliable information using our own techniques than we did using the abusive procedures. I cannot name one instance in which abuse was successful after standard interrogation techniques failed…. Not a single military interrogator with whom I have communicated expressed anything but contempt for the idea that torture could be more effective than standard interrogation techniques.”

Marney Mason:
” You try to develop a very intense relationship with another human being so they’ll part with information they’d rather not part with. You wheedle, cajole, trick, lie. The point is to collect usable, actionable information. Sure, if you start pulling a guy’s fingernails out, he’ll start talking – it may not be the truth, but he’s going to tell you exactly what you want to hear.
In a training environment ( a mock prisoner-of-war camp), my students would be subjected to hostile forms of interrogation: loud noises, fake burials, 15-20-volt electric shocks. And I got people to confess to things they absolutely did not do. The information you receive is worthless.”

Travis W. Hall:
“Over my 14 years of military experience, both as an interrogator and as a JAG, I observed degradation in the respect of service members for the laws of war since 9/11. When I attended interrogation school in 1992, all of the attendees had 40 hours of classroom time on the Geneva Conventions followed by a written exam on all the rights and obligations of the military personnel under the Conventions.
What I saw firsthand as an interrogator and, later as a JAG in Iraq in 2003 working on detainee issues, has left me with a strong belief that torture is counterproductive. What has proven effective in interrogation time and again, regardless of what culture the detainee is from, is building a positive relationship with an individual. Americans really want their soldiers to not only come home, but come home with honor. I would challenge the current administration to come up with one example where torture in interrogation has produced actionable intelligence that saved American lives in the United States.”

Above quoted here:The Questioners Answer

Trained and experienced interrogators
can, in fact, accomplish the intelligence gathering mission using only those
techniques, developed and proven effective over decades, found in the Army
Field Manual 34-52 (1992). You will also see that experienced interrogators find
prisoner/detainee abuse and torture to be counter-productive to the intelligence
gathering mission.
The signatories to the Statement represent over 200 years of combined
interrogation service and experience, including Chief Warrant Officer 5 Donald
Marquis who, at the time of his retirement earlier this year, was the Army’s most
senior interrogator….
… Of the
interrogators with whom we were able to establish contact, 100% have
expressed total agreement with the Statement. The names of active-duty
interrogators have not been added to the list of signatories because of conflicts
between the Statement and public comments by the Secretary of Defense and
his staff, and the Vice President and his staff….
…We urge you to listen to the subjectmatter
experts – the actual Interrogators to whom you entrust intelligence
gathering – and refute any efforts to condone or authorize techniques we find to
be counter-productive to the intelligence collection mission.

Second, Dan Coleman was the top FBI expert on al Qaeda. He was there when Zubaidah was captured and his opinion on the reliability of Zubaidah is based on his examination of Zubaidah’s diaries, which revealed he has multiple personality disorder, perhaps related to a severe head wound Zubaidah suffered from a mortar explosion several years previous, as well as the fact that Zubaidah had nothing to do with operational matters. He was a logistics guy who funneled people in and out of Afghanistan.

Our Founding Fathers established this nation with a set of values we should not so quickly dismiss. The British we fought during the Revolution abused and tortured prisoners, and also murdered wounded soldiers on the battlefield. They also refused to recognize them as soldiers, but regarded them as terrorists.
Here is John Adams:

“… In 1776, American leaders believed that it was not enough to win the war. They also had to win in a way that was consistent with the values of this society and the principles of their cause. One of their greatest achievements in the winter campaign of 1776-77 was to manage the war in a manner that was true to the expanding humanitarian ideals of the American Revolution. It happened in a way that was different from the ordinary course of wars in general. In Congress and the army, American leaders resolved that the War of Independence would be conducted with a respect for human rights, even of the enemy. This idea grew stronger during the campaign of 1776-77, not weaker as is commonly the case in war.
In Congress, John Adams took the lead. To his wife he wrote, “I who am always made miserable by the Misery of every sensible being, am obliged to hear continual accounts of the barbarities, the cruel Murders in cold blood, even the most tormenting ways of starving and freezing committed by our Enemies… These accounts harrow me beyond Description.” John Adams resolved that the guiding principles of the American Republic would always be what he called the policy of humanity. He wrote, “I know of no policy, God is my witness, but this – Piety, Humanity and Honesty are the best Policy. Blasphemy, Cruelty and Villainy have prevailed and may again. But they won’t prevail against America, in this Contest, because I find the more of them are employed, the less they succeed.”
- Pulitzer Prize – winning Washington’s Crossing, by David Hackett Fischer (Oxford University Press, 2004), page 375-376

Here we see evidence where in fact

I should have clarified my use of “here”. That refers to EW’s post that according to the 9-11 Commission Report, for all the torture perpetrated on Abu Zubaydah, they got 10 pieces of information, none of which were useful in defusing a bomb or plot of any kind. At best they got snippets of background on al-Qaeda. Even by your own expectations of “useful torture”, this is indefensible.