Schock is Pwned by Maddow

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lc6aw8nlcVw[/youtube]

Of course, we know that not to be the case as he has cooperated once they brought his family in to help encourage him.  In other words, a success at treating people with the rule of law.

What’s most bizarre about the stream of fiction from Republicans on Abdulmutallab is that there’s no evidence that the strategy they are proposing works better.

Reading one is his rights doesn’t stop them from talking.  All it does is tell someone they have a right to remain silent and have a lawyer present. In almost all cases talking is going to help them so a lawyer’s advice is going to be to talk.  When you have a plane load of passengers who noticed you tried to set your underwear bomb off, there’s no question you are going to be convicted.  Your best legal strategy is to talk.

More to the point though, is that the consensus amongst everyone except private contractors has been to utilize similar techniques. Before the CIA followed a couple clown contractors down the path of torture, the CIA and FBI were cooperating using non-torture techniques to gain information.  In many cases the people he dealt with weren’t read their rights, but they were handled in a way where they weren’t forced to talk which is apparently what Republicans think should happen regardless of the effectiveness of their techniques. One of the FBI interrogators has pointed this out:

It is inaccurate, however, to say that Abu Zubaydah had been uncooperative. Along with another F.B.I. agent, and with several C.I.A. officers present, I questioned him from March to June 2002, before the harsh techniques were introduced later in August. Under traditional interrogation methods, he provided us with important actionable intelligence.

We discovered, for example, that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. Abu Zubaydah also told us about Jose Padilla, the so-called dirty bomber. This experience fit what I had found throughout my counterterrorism career: traditional interrogation techniques are successful in identifying operatives, uncovering plots and saving lives.

There was no actionable intelligence gained from using enhanced interrogation techniques on Abu Zubaydah that wasn’t, or couldn’t have been, gained from regular tactics. In addition, I saw that using these alternative methods on other terrorists backfired on more than a few occasions — all of which are still classified. The short sightedness behind the use of these techniques ignored the unreliability of the methods, the nature of the threat, the mentality and modus operandi of the terrorists, and due process.

Defenders of these techniques have claimed that they got Abu Zubaydah to give up information leading to the capture of Ramzi bin al-Shibh, a top aide to Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, and Mr. Padilla. This is false. The information that led to Mr. Shibh’s capture came primarily from a different terrorist operative who was interviewed using traditional methods. As for Mr. Padilla, the dates just don’t add up: the harsh techniques were approved in the memo of August 2002, Mr. Padilla had been arrested that May.

One of the worst consequences of the use of these harsh techniques was that it reintroduced the so-called Chinese wall between the C.I.A. and F.B.I., similar to the communications obstacles that prevented us from working together to stop the 9/11 attacks. Because the bureau would not employ these problematic techniques, our agents who knew the most about the terrorists could have no part in the investigation. An F.B.I. colleague of mine who knew more about Khalid Shaikh Mohammed than anyone in the government was not allowed to speak to him.