I post this not to so much educate those of us who already know torture doesn't work, is morally wrong and there never will be an excuse to practice it. I post in the hope of changing the minds of those few who read DKos and wander back to their right wing safe heavens and post "24" plot lines to justify it. I post for those who still believe we must in order to keep us "safe."
On that note let me take you back to WW II Britain. A small isle that didn't imagine they might be attacked again and again they were being attacked by all manner of frightening messengers from the sky. London was being reduced to rubble, children were evacuated into the country side for fear the next generation would be lost to the bombs and rockets.
With this scenario going on and the fear of imminent invasion from across The Channel, one might think a blind eye would be turned in order to get any all information needed from captured spies to keep the British people safe.
But the blind eye did not turn or even look in the direction of torture to gain valuable and needed intelligence.
Allow me introduce you to Colonel Robin "Tin Eye" Stephens: (Times UK)
Colonel Robin “Tin Eye” Stephens was the commander of the wartime spy prison and interrogation centre codenamed Camp 020, an ugly Victorian mansion surrounded by barbed wire on the edge of Ham Common. In the course of the war, some 500 enemy spies from 44 countries passed through Camp 020; most were interrogated, at some point, by Stephens; all but a tiny handful crumbled.
Stephens was a bristling, xenophobic martinet; in appearance, with his glinting monocle and cigarette holder, he looked exactly like the caricature Gestapo interrogator who has “vays of making you talk”.
Stephens had ways of making anyone talk. In a top secret report, recently declassified by MI5 and now in the Public Records Office, he listed the tactics needed to break down a suspect: “A breaker is born and not made . . . pressure is attained by personality, tone, and rapidity of questions, a driving attack in the nature of a blast which will scare a man out of his wits.”
The terrifying commandant of Camp 020 refined psychological intimidation to an art form. Suspects often left the interrogation cells legless with fear after an all-night grilling. An inspired amateur psychologist, Stephens used every trick, lie and bullying tactic to get what he needed; he deployed threats, drugs, drink and deceit. But he never once resorted to violence. “Figuratively,” he said, “a spy in war should be at the point of a bayonet.” But only ever figuratively. As one colleague wrote: “The Commandant obtained results without recourse to assault and battery. It was the very basis of Camp 020 procedure that nobody raised a hand against a prisoner.”
Stephens did not eschew torture out of mercy. This was no squishy liberal: the eye was made of tin, and the rest of him out of tungsten. (Indeed, he was disappointed that only 16 spies were executed during the war.) His motives were strictly practical. “Never strike a man. It is unintelligent, for the spy will give an answer to please, an answer to escape punishment. And having given a false answer, all else depends upon the false premise.”
So the next time someone says we must in order to be safe tell them about Colonel Robin "Tin Eye" Stephens who did not turn his blind eye to justify torture.
Thanks to Andrew Sullivan for drawing my attention to this story.