Quote Originally Posted by wm View Post
Oh Grasshopper (he intones in his best David Carradine voice), there is much for you still to learn.
I recommend that you do a little reading about what is encompassed by the intelligence discipline. It is not simply analysis. It includes planning, collection, processing, analysis and dissemination. It takes many forms or -Ints. Interrogation is a technique that is germane to just one part of the whole discipline--the Human Intelligence (or HUMINT) sub-discipline.
i understand the subfields of intelligence and i know how central interrogations are to human intelligence. I just think interrogations, especially as when they drift more towards torture, corrupt the intelligence process. I mean you will say anything to stop pain. It's that simple. From my research, which is mostly on Vietnam, its seems that informant nets and agent penetrations are a much better source of human intelligence than interrogations. Considering that so much of "small wars" are concerned with "winning the hearts and minds" and that "interrogation" tactics often serve to alienate the population, I think one would want to be very careful about what countries they rendition prisoners to and what tactics are condoned. I think the CIA black sites and Gitmo (in addition to extraordinary rendition) have hurt the US more than helped them in the War on Terror. I can we really say the damage done in terms of public standing is worth whatever intelligence was gotten from those interrogations?