Lieutenant Colonel,Tony Shaffer (retired), author of a few books like Operation Dark Heart is a proud torture administrator. He lends his expertise on enhanced interrogation techniques (EIT) on Fox and Friends Weekend edition. Uncle Rupey's network has proclaimed torture is perfectly acceptable. They use the deplorable euphemism EIT, which inaccurately intimates the savagery of torture. They defend these embarrassingly atypical EITs because they believe they're effective, even if they are in violation of the Geneva Convention. The retired Lt. Colonel is a Fox News-contrived expert who has trouble discerning right from wrong, that is very clear.
Shaffer has a habit of making wild accusations to satisfy the conspiracy theorists who seem to gravitate towards Alex Jones and similar wingnuts. He claimed that President Obama merely watched Benghazi happen and did absolutely nothing. When asked about the failed rescue attempt of James Foley from his ISIL captors, Shaffer resorted to his usual 'blame President Obama for everything' rationale.
The reason that raid into Syria failed to get Foley and those guys was because the president drug (dragged) his feet. He waited too long, the intel got stale, and by the time we actually gave the “go” word, it failed because we just didn’t react quick enough.
In addition to a fear of adverbs and aversion to decent grammar, he and Fox News' Anna Kooiman cannot, or will not pronounce Senator Diane Feinstein's name correctly (Fine-steen). Shaffer also suffers from a tenuous understanding of what constitutes illegal coercive techniques. Not surprisingly, Fox News' torture-inflicting buddy will praise their effectiveness.
I did this for 30 years... We have always done these sorts of things, and when Senator John McCain says these are not our traditions? We have done this as a military and as an intelligence service since before WW2. So, they are coercive, they do tend to make people very uncomfortable, and in the end, they actually do very much pay off and I'm appalled by the fact that Senator Finesteen (his pronunciation) and what they're doing is trying to move this line from legitimate interrogation over to torture. It is NOT torture... one of the most effective things, as you mention, isolation and the idea of picking out certain cultural vulnerabilities and certain psychological vulnerabilities and hammering them.
Physical pain and psychological intimidation sound a lot like torture. He brags how he would threaten their lives. He'd say something like, Basically your life as you know it is gone, unless you cooperate, and that was a huge motivator. How do you break someone? In the Fox News world that mimics the show, 24, THAT is most paramount.
Shaffer admits that EVERYBODY breaks eventually. The information he obtained with psychological torture was the best, in his opinion. Not once did he mention that much of the intelligence gathered from torture (physical or mental) is unreliable. In fact, in 1989, the CIA told Congress that,
“…inhumane physical or psychological techniques are counterproductive because they do not produce intelligence and will probably result in false answers.”
Tony Shaffer says that Feinstein's report fails to mention that coercive methods work, they work very well. People are trained to do them, so it's all just perfectly fine. Both Fox News' obligatory blonde hostess and the torture-wielding guest see absolutely nothing wrong with the Senate's findings on torture, so case closed. America has engaged far too long on such a trivial matter of violating International Law. We're America, we're number one, and no blight on our history could ever change that.
