A couple of things to keep in mind about torture:
First, sophisticated torture is quite complex and requires a fairly artistic psychological profile of the subject being tortured. Each person has their own unique set of fears and reservations that can be exploited for valuable information.
Second, in the instances where kindness and a sense of noblesse oblige has been effective (as with both the Germans and the Soviets), the success was largely, I would argue, as a result of prisoners expecting the most barbaric and inhumane treatment imaginable (which both regimes were well equipped and willing to deliver). The tremendous fear of suffering and death that a prisoner expected worked on his mind in the background and, when treated with uncommon civility in place of the anticipated brutality, the prisoner broke out of sheer panic. Here he was expecting the devil and he encounters a saint! The more thoughtful Japanese used similar techniques with equal effectiveness; but in all cases, the actual fear of a terrible death (a very real and well-documented fear in each instance) underwrites the effectiveness of the light touch. If the terrible reputation for cruelty were exposed to be nothing but a chimera, I doubt anyone would tremble when being captured by such adversaries. Simulated torture, like waterboarding, is buttressed by a very real possibility that we might actually drown a couple here and there; the mope has to believe, at some level, that we might actually waste him, either from vindictiveness or from accident, and at that point the the instinctive fear of death overwhelms the rational mind and he coughs up the goods. But once our enemies know for sure that we are faking, the gig is up–or made significantly more difficult.
Bobobill, I doubt you know this, but I heard it directly from Dick Cheney that Satan is a great kisser, and knows how to throw a terrific party. Sorry you weren’t invited.
