Regarding the treatment of detainees held in secret facilities overseas: “U.S. officials who defend the renditions say the prisoners are sent to these third countries not because of their coercive questioning techniques, but because of their cultural affinity with the captives. Besides being illegal, they said, torture produces unreliable information from people who are desperate to stop the pain. They look to foreign allies more because their intelligence services can develop a culture of intimacy that Americans cannot. They may use interrogators who speak the captive’s Arabic dialect and often use the prospects of shame and the reputation of the captive’s family to goad the captive into talking.”
– Dana Priest and Barton Gellman, “U.S. Decries Abuse but Defends Interrogations,” The Washington Post, Dec. 26, 2002