Taxi to the Dark Side (Alex Gibney 2007) accuse of what was going on behind the curtain in Abu Ghraib. Dilawar, the innocent taxi driver who took 3 passengers for a taxi ride, has been under detention with harsh torture under the purpose of getting information, and died. The military police Thomas Curtis, who was at Bagram says, “My memory of Dilawar was chained up with the hooded up and no sleeping.
”. This is obviously the opposite way what Geneva Convention set up as a goal.However, the American president Bush rose up the question that whether the suspected terrorist should be protected by laws like Geneva Convention. And the government gave the legal cover for certain organizations allowing torture which previously forbidden. However, does torture really work? Despite all those risky issues around the world, does torture is really the one of the most effective ways getting information from detainees? I’ll show you that torture is definitely not the effective way to get information. First, torture does not ensure us that the confession from suspects is reliable.
However, does information which was from the detainees who had gotten tortured really reliable? Tony Lagourains, the military interrogator who put into the Iraq war for interrogating suspects says, “It is very difficult to get confession if there is barely evidence on the suspected guy. So you start using harsher and harsher techniques to get the confession. ” Imagine that you are under detention, surrounded what you feel fearful all around and got tortured. It is quite obvious you will say anything regardless of what is true, just for stopping all the pain and fearful feeling.
There are some cases has been reported that people forced to confess, suffered from physical interrogation. In the early 20th century, police believed that they need some physical interrogation was necessary to solve some cases. The Plummer case is one case that only 15 years old kid did forced confession that cannot stand the sweat of torturing of police in 1991. However, years later, it turned out that the kid just confessed with the harsh torture on him and the kid was innocent (Bewig).This could happen to everyone who suspected to be involved to.
Retired Air force Col. John Rothrock who once headed to Vietnam as an interrogation team told the Washington Post’s Anne Applebaum, “If I take a Bunsen burner to the guy’s genitals, he’s going to tell you just about anything,” Torture sometimes makes the detainees to close up what they know. Army Col. Stuart Herrington who is sent as an interrogator in Vietnam, Panama and Iraq says to the Washington Post that torture is simply not a good way to get information. In his experience, it was able to make 9 out of 10 people to let us know the true information what they know without harsh method.
But when started using any of harsh method, the rate goes lower (Applebaum). Additionally, we also can find out that torture does not really work well with the recently released FBI documents from the naval base at Guantanamo Bay. This document says whenever interrogators used harsher methods than ever before, detainees stopped being helpful (Applabaum). Not only those two, there are lots of people who worked previously as interrogators agree that torture only produces unreliable results really ineffectively and slowly.
John Hutson, the judge advocate general says, Rather torture, breaking down the wall between detainees and interrogator, getting the trust of detainees is the best way to get the true information. The effort of Georgetown research, which includes the research of retired senior military interrogators and research psychologists, has concluded that torture is not a shortcut to get the information which we can believe. Torture actually produces less productive results of interrogations.Unlike most people believe that torture really decreases the time till getting the information, torture actually is really ineffective, slow and unreliable way. Torture does not ensure us that the information is true.
Torture sometimes even closes up what detainees know. In the movie Taxi to the Dark Side, Jack Clooney, the former FBI interrogator who once worked at Bagram and Abu Ghraib argues that kindness is more effective way to manipulate the detainees than cruel ways. Instead of torture, peaceful way like getting trust of detainees and trying to persuade them is more effective than harsher methods.
