Look at the example of “Curveball” and a lot of the BS intelligence that came out of Gitmo.

We cannot trust what the Indians are saying about the Mumbai attacker about Pakistan being involved. If he said these things under torture, he may just be saying what the Pakistanis want to hear.

There are a number of pecularities about the Mumbai attacks that suggest some local Indian groups may have been involved.

Tactics used in Mumbai are similar to the indigenous communist Naxalite insurgency of India’s poorest regions while the dock where the terrorists landed is one controlled by the D-Company criminal organisation and has been used to smuggle arms into Mumbai in the past.

A lot of cross-current, so hard to rely just on the confessions of a likely tortured captured Mumbai attacker.

Thank you for this, another, thought-provoking cartoon. It is excellent.

Such a well written series. I suppose “24″ is as well to have so many fans.

How the heck will Dexter escape The Skinner next Sunday night? He will because there’s a next season but it’s a gripper.

Hell of a bargin too…

I have not been a 24 watcher, so I can’t quite get with the conversation about that series.

What follows is going to be a bit of a diversion (off the wall, perhaps) from the topic of whether torture should be banned or condoned in some instances. There has been much good discussion of this already. I am against torture in any form.

It occurs to me that aside from the difficulty of drawing a fine line as to what is and what is not torture, that there are some interesting notions in historical literature as to what constitutes torture and what may be more or less effective in bringing about a desired result.

Consider the old proverb, “You can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar”. According to the New Testament, vinegar was offered to Jesus while he was hanging on the cross — an action generally regarded as a continuation of his torture, but which some say may actually have been merciful.

Is there any truth to the notion that you can you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar?

According to Christopher Null, who did an experiment to see if this is true, the definitive answer is NO.

Null had been dealing with a plague of fruit flies, so he turned to traditional methods to get rid of them. Reflecting on the old adage that you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar, he decided to do an experiment to see if it was true.

To test the old proverb, he put out two soda bottles, one with a small amount of honey and one with some red wine vinegar. He left them next to each other for two weeks.

He reported that the results were indisputable: Vinegar catches far more flies than honey. In fact, he said, honey doesn’t catch any flies at all. The vinegar bottle had about 15 flies in it. The honey bottle, none. He didn ‘t see one fly go into the honey bottle, but they loved the vinegar.

I don’t know if this experiment has been replicated or tested using different kinds of flies, but certainly this was far too small a sample to generalize to all types of flies.

What has this to do with torture? I think there may be a remote connection. When it comes to trying to extract information from a prisoner, some of the discussants on this board have suggested that an attempt to win the confidence of a prisoner through kindness (honey) may help induce a prisoner to talk, whereas, physical punishment (vinegar) may heighten resistance and be ineffective. Null’s experiment may suggest otherwise. I hope this is not seen as a pro-torture argument.

This may be a discussion of borderline relevance to the topic of torture, but well, I had fun with it.

Now imagine this:

Your name is Mark Lundsford. The police have arrested John Cuey and say Cuey knows where your daughter is but Cuey is not telling them where. She may still be alive and if Cuey gives up her location soon enough, she might live.

How far are you willing to go to get that information out of Cuey since time is of the essence? Would you waterboard him? Is your personal adversion to what you consider torture worth your child’s life?

I see so many people here saying they love “24.” I watched the first two seasons. I found it left me full of anxiety, which I already have plenty of!

For me, I’d rather watch entertainment that makes me feel good: a little laughter, an interesting detective story, or even science stuff.

As for the subject of torture, I agree with everyone’s posts!