BOUND BY CONVENTION: A look at interrogation techniques; via Noli Irritare Leones.

…I had spent hundreds of hours with the interrogation teams first assigned at Bagram. At one time or another, the Bagram crew had considered versions of the methods listed in the right column of that Abu Ghraib sign. They had rejected most as beyond the law, and adopted a few others in less potent form. But the trend line was clear–the longer they were at the prison, the harsher the methods they employed, and the better the information they got. …

One of the biggest breaks came midway through the war when a Special Forces team returned to Bagram with a pile of documents. Among them was an Al Qaeda training manual on resisting interrogation.

The interrogators were stunned. It spelled out all of the maddening tactics they had faced for months. It coached detainees to withhold key information until their former colleagues had time to adjust their plans, to claim to have forgotten all names and places, to use the Islamic calendar for all references to dates–anything to slow or confuse captors.

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