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Saturday, May 30, 2009

Cookies Versus Waterboarding

This is a curious article from Time. Clearly there is an effort to change the tone of the country regarding torture, but cookies and milk?

If the article is accurate, then bravo. Its important to note that according to the TIME story, Abu Jandal was in a Yemeni prison for one year prior to the cookie offering. He doesn't enter the interrogation fresh as it were.

If the story is a concoction, then what's the intent.

Time: After Waterboarding: How to Make Terrorists Talk?
All it took to soften up Abu Jandal, who had been closer to Osama bin Laden than any other terrorist ever captured, was a handful of sugar-free cookies.

He had no intention of cooperating with the Americans...

...the Yemeni gave up a wealth of information about al-Qaeda — including the identities of seven of the 9/11 bombers — but the cookies were the turning point.

Put simply, there's no definitive evidence that torture works.

"If you have to inflict pain, then you've lost control of the situation, the subject and yourself."

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