Col. Stuart Herrington ran secret interrogation centers for the military from the Vietnam War through the early 1990s. He gave a speech about interrogation techniques, which Thomas Ricks mentions on his blog, The Best Defense.
Says Ricks, “One of the most striking aspects of his talk is the cold professional contempt he has for Cheney, Rumsfeld and others who not only encouraged a brutal approach, but were amateurish in doing so.”
Herrington said, “There was no room on our team for charlatans who believed in sleep deprivation, inducing hypothermia, stress positions, face slapping, forced nudity, water boarding, blaring heavy metal music, or other amateurish, ineffective and ethically flawed tricks.”
It’s a very interesting post. I suspect Herrington was as sickened as I was at reading “The Dark Side,” a superb piece of reporting about our descent torture, which will be remembered for decades as an American low-point.
