Congress has just passed Bush's bill on terrorism giving him latitude on interrogation techniques. First, Bush gets to decide who's a terrorist. Second, he gets to decide if a prisoner knows something. And third, he gets to decide how much emotional and physical stress he gets to put the prisoner under.
But will this extreme stress really yield results? John McCain was tortured by the Viet Cong to reveal the names of his crew; he rattled off the names of the members of a baseball team. A Norwegian resistance fighter was captured by the Germans who wanted him to reveal the location of a certain group. To get him to do so, they stuck a screwdriver in his kneecap and twisted. He held out until he was certain that the group was at sea on its way to England.
Do only good guys give no or bad information to their tormentors? Do only bad guys "spill their guts" to their tormentors? We seem to forget that our bad guys are somebody else's good guys. They may make heroic efforts to resist their tormentors. Isn't it possible that a few days before an attack a prisoner cracks and tells his tormentors there is going to be an attack on San Francisco and gives many details. Will this prevent the attack if the details are wrong and the target is really Chicago?
Even if these techniques seem to provide results, won't we lose allies and sympathy around the world? Future "coalitions" may be much smaller.
