rec.arts.theatre.musicals

On Mon, 01 Oct 2007 11:55:48 -0700, "tbarry22@ "
wrote:

> On Oct 1, 1:51 pm, Christopher Jahn wrote:
> > zigfr...@ wrote in news:
> > @ :
> >
> > > Torture this detainee and save hundreds, thousands,
> > > MILLIONS of American lives, what will you do?
> >
> > The reason no decent intelligence agency uses torture is because
> > it doesn't get you reliable information. The person being
> > tortured simply tends to tell you what you want to hear so you'll
> > stop torturing them. If the person is innocent, the confession
> > is complete fiction; if the person is guilty, it probably won't
> > contain enough facts to be helpful. This has been borne out
> > again and again in this current conflict; only the amateurs want
> > the right to use torture, the professionals won't use it.
> >
> > Read up on "the spanish inquisition," and follow up with case
> > studies on POWs during the Vietnam conflict.
>
> EXACTLY. Information through torture is either completely fictional
> or so incomplete as to render it useless. McCain admitted to himself
> that when tortured for names by the VC that he gave them the names of
> football players.

England was one of the leading countries in abandoning the use of
torture to obtain confessions: not because we were especially moral,
but simply because we realised faster than most that torture doesn't
bloody work. For a while we retained it as a way of confirming known
information from people whose guilt had already been established by
other means, but as a way of obtaining information in the first place
it was about as reliable as reading tea leaves.

Bringing in a theatrical theme, there was a very good production at
Chichester a couple of years ago: "5/11", about the terrorist plot to
blow up the Houses of Parliament in 1605. Torture was used at the time
to confirm suspicions over who was involved in the plot once some of
the conspirators had been caught. (I mean torture was used in 1605,
not at Chichester, although their abysmal 2002 production of Cabaret
came close.)

--
Matthew Winn
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