"We got more information out of a German general with a game of chess or Ping-Pong than they do today, with their torture." -- Henry Kolm, 90, part of a U.S. intelligence team that interrogated Nazis POWs during WWII
True, some chess pieces must really hurt, depending on how they are used. As for those pingpong rackets...
I see it as a sort of rebuttal to Al Capone's famous "You get more of what you want with a kind word and a gun than you can with just a kind word."
The difference between German generals and current-day fanatics is that the former could be befriended. Not that I'm a supporter of torture, both out of moral reasons and because, really, torture doesn't really work. What the torturer wants to hear may not actually be the truth, after all. My only exception to my rule is when the clock is ticking, you have clear intel of a bombing that may claim dozens if not hundreds of lives within hours, you don't know the location, but you captured someone who knows... In such a case, there's a very bad choice, and the question is only which option is the lesser evil. A government is responsible either way, be it for the torture or for failing to stop mass-murder, and I'd opt for the option that has less dead people in it in such a case.
Al Capone, eh? ;-) Well, in his case it was more a matter of which he used at any given case... Kind words for the bribed people, with the hint of a gun being available should the deal be forgotten, and just a gun for just about everyone else.
Well, we tried baseball, and it worked on the Japanese. We tried hockey and it worked on Russians. ... Need another sport! Soccer, mayhaps? Probably would work, but Americans seem twitchy about it, probably because of the whole "It's called football! - No, FOOTBALL is football, this is soccer!" upsettedness :tongue:
