re: humane treatment
If our only goal is to warehouse prisoners in comfort in perpetuity, fine.
If we want information, then what?
Are you willing to accept the losses that lack of strong interrogation will entail? And it's apparently been established that anything that makes a prisoner unhappy is "torture."
It is a valid moral tradeoff, but as with Iraq casualties caused by precision military techniques, you can't have it both ways.
Despite the prevailing myth that nothing useful has been obtained by interrogation, this report states that prisoners have provided the U.S. with:
· Information on individuals connected to al Qaida’s efforts to acquire weapons of mass destruction.
· Information on front companies and accounts supporting al Qaida, Taliban, and Hezb-I Islam/Gulbuddin (HIG) operations.
· Information on surface-to-air missiles, improvised explosive devices (IEDs), and tactics and training used by al Qaida, Taliban, and HIG elements.
· Identification of HIG associates in Afghanistan.
· Significant, “actionable†information on al Qaida explosives training, assembly, and distribution throughout Afghanistan.
· Information on the training of young adults (age 16-18) for suicide bombing missions.
· Detailed information on travel routes potentially used by terrorists to reach the U.S. via Latin America.
· Detailed information on transnational funding operations in support of al Qaida, Taliban, and HIG, as well as information on individuals suspected of money laundering for terrorist organizations.
· Information on non-governmental organizations (NGOs) providing financial and material support to terrorist organizations.
It doesn't say what techniques were used, but I dare say it didn't involve giving the prisoners little cards to fill out and a pencil with a nice eraser.