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Interrogation: The American Way

11/13/07, 4:47 pm EST

How real American interrogation works:

After confessing to slaughtering 180,000 Kurds and plotting to build a doomsday nuke, Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was so upset when his FBI interrogator left for home that he cried like a baby.

FBI Special Agent George Piro whipped out two Cuban Cohibas – Saddam’s favorite cigar – and they smoked on the patio behind his cell at Baghdad’s airport.

“When we were saying bye, he started to tear up,” Piro recalled… The self-effacing G-man was hardly surprised – he had spent nearly a year carefully becoming Saddam’s best friend in a successful ploy to extract confessions from the notorious brute…

Piro, then 36, began grilling Saddam in early 2004. Instead of bright lights, loud music or waterboarding, the Beirut-born Arabic speaker – who immigrated to the U.S. as a teen – built a rapport with the dictator nabbed in a spider hole. He treated him with respect and took care of his every need.

On his birthday, Piro showed Saddam news clippings showing that Iraqis no longer celebrated the date. But then the agent gave him baklava Piro’s Lebanese mother sent him in Baghdad.

They talked about sports and Saddam’s pulp novels, and soon the despot was spilling his guts over thick cups of Folger’s.

Hat Tip: Andrew Sullivan


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Comments

testimony | 11/13/2007, 5:00 pm EST

Something that frustrates me about recent ‘terrorist’ confessions: Any confession must somehow be verified by information that only the one who actually did it would know(or more specifically, something the person being interrogated would not know if they were innocent). Otherwise you have nothing. A person can say anything, and follow the lead of interrogators questions and regurgitate what they’ve heard. Its no different than the poor questioning tactics police used up until recently to get witness testimony. Kids particularly were led to answers the investigation wanted. It’s the same idea. If you want to be certain, you have to be careful what you ask. A lot of recent investigations in iraq failed to realize this simple idea.

Delta Wild Man | 11/13/2007, 9:00 pm EST

What about torture for the hell of it??
You know,, use it as a moral booster

Da Truth | 11/13/2007, 11:11 pm EST

“What about torture for the hell of it??
You know,, use it as a moral booster”

Yeah, right before we round up the Jews and send them through another round of extermination camping. That’d boost your morale, Nazi.

Delta Wild Man | 11/14/2007, 1:58 am EST

DA
Thanks for your bull chit..
As a bastard son of a Jew, why don’t you teach me something??
Teach me how it is to be a Jew..
Then again,, Teach my mother how to be a “GOOD INJUN”..
Native American??
Don’t talk to me about the Nazi’s..
You don’t know about the Nazi’s until you know about how the democrats set the phuking dogs loose on Dr. King in Memphis..
Preach to me,, and you’ll burn in hell

Delta Wild Man | 11/14/2007, 1:59 am EST

I was there to see it first hand!!

DirtyDennis | 11/14/2007, 7:28 am EST

DWM,

It must have been tough holding those dogs back.

DirtyDennis | 11/14/2007, 7:29 am EST

DWM,

Wait, maybe you were on the hose brigade and didn’t have to ‘fight’ the dogs. Or were you handing out pick handles?

Delta Wild Man | 11/14/2007, 10:04 am EST

Dirty
I would have thought you’d be over it by now..
Looks as if that debate you lost with Tim is bothering you more than you care to admit..

I’m not a physiologists, but I have slept at a Holliday Inn Express a few times..
If I can help,,

Delta Wild Man | 11/14/2007, 12:37 pm EST

Reveiled a little more about myself then I should have I think..

Forgive me one and all..

Jed Clampett | 11/14/2007, 12:49 pm EST

you would think of all the people deserving enhanced interrogation techniques Saddam would be one. I guess the administration is less willing to torture those it considers it’s allies on the war on humanity.

Dr. Ralph | 11/15/2007, 10:11 am EST

Professional courtesy…

Thogwummpy | 11/15/2007, 10:15 pm EST

Gee, I notice how Rolling Stone omitted an important item from this story: Saddam told Piro that he intentionally deceived the world about his WMD in order to create ambiguity. Pause. Let that sink in, neo-libs. Bush didn’t fabricate the intelligence picture…it was SADDAM who bluffed—and lost. Ergo: History will exhonerate Bush from the concocted hysteria garbage he’s been slapped with all this time.

DirtyDennis | 11/16/2007, 7:55 am EST

Let the revisionist history begin.

So Bush gets a pass ’cause he was ‘duped?’ That’s rich. He invaded another country because he ‘thought’ they were a threat? No evidence? I fail to see how this exonerates him. It’s just more damning of his absurdity,

Thogwummpy | 11/16/2007, 9:58 am EST

It DOES vindicate. Why? Neo-libs frame their anti-war case on the mythology that Bush fabricated the intelligence to mislead the world. (Even though, the picture of Saddam’s threat, was codified thru the 1990’s—lefties are inept on case facts such as Bill Clinton making Saddam’s removal official U.S. policy in the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998). PLUS, the ‘91 Cease Fire terms said Saddam had to “prove to the world” that he’d disarmed…he refused. Thusly, we weren’t obligated to first determine he had WMD—it’s was Saddam’s responsiblity to prove it. (Of course, no retro-hippy explains what happened to the chemical munitions UN inspectors photographed before leaving Iraq in December ‘98—such weaponry the peace activist claims “never existed” because they’ve disappeared with zero forensic evidence of what happened to them).
It was correct to issue Saddam an ultimatum, because ON 9/11—yep, that very day…Iraq shot down an American aircraft (there were literally thousands of attacks upon our aircraft partoling the zones to protect the ethnic groups Saddam traditionally butchered, by time the Congressional War Resolution came to a vote), and Saddam within days, publishes a manifesto declaring common cause with the 9/11 hijackers. So yeah, doctrinally—the American President was compelled to disarm Iraq…he issued an ultimatum…a year and a half later (Saddam still defiant), we correctly moved into an enforcement phase. History is going to say so.
Most Americans get their political vision from media like Rolling Stone (who redacted what they didn’t like from the fact material of the above story)…and Neo-libs yap as if they “know the gospel”. Well, I WORK IN B2B DEFENSE SECTOR MEDIA, AND I TELL YOU PLAIN—THE ANTI-WAR CASE IS FOUNDED ON MANAGED DELUSIONS that will not survive the test of history. Saddam WAS Saddam (his record of aggression screams the truth). And if he bluffed the coalition into war…then the war is HIS fault.

Jed Clampett | 11/16/2007, 7:42 pm EST

just like bush bases his violence on imagnation.

Believe it or not, the CIA gave the Iranians most of their advanced knowledge of nukes. They used a Russian defector to pass on technical papers with a few flaws that would take them years to figure out. The russian, being nervous that the blatant mistakes would be discovered and he would be killed, warned the Iranians to the discrepancies. The iranians would end up with very good technical knowledge with a couple of little mistakes that could be fixed later.

so the problem is mostly of our own making… or perhaps it was designed that way to have a later excuse to invade and take the oil. Only the spooks that are this countries Industrial Complex’s private army really know, the CIA.

So now we have a prez that wants to invade the country because of imagined threats and capabilities and intentions. Unfortunately, they imagine the worst when it’s convenient for them and the most rosy picture when they need it for political reasons. If we don’t turn this around quick, we will be dragged kicking and screaming into a global conflict of unprecedented proportions, money won’t help you much when scarecity is the norm.

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