Interrogations

They have their ways of making you talk, that is, techniques of interrogation.  Coercion, manipulation, subterfuge, undermining, preemptive indictments, divide and conquer, and, oh yeah, torture.  Yes, all of these and more have been used by intelligence agencies in wartime and in times of peace to extract information from detainees.  If this seems irrelevant and random, I assure you it is quite prescient given the conflagration of current political climate, particularly in the last decade or so.  After all, many of the torture-related techniques to squeeze confessions out of ‘the bad guys’ were developed and employed during the Cold War era…and if you don’t think Russia is breaking back on the radar of intelligence agencies more and more so as of late, it’s time to look at and not through the rose-colored glasses you have been wearing…and the best way to do that is to take them off.  The ‘good cop, bad cop’ technique of interrogation is the tame (and some would say ‘lame’) way of causing the pressure valve to release on the oral cavity of the suspect.  Other, more “aggressive” techniques may involve a radical increase in the decibel level of the questions being asked coupled with a radical increase in the amperage of electricity tethered to the individual with copper prongs.  Again, if this sounds immaterial and bizarre, consider that the President-elect has stated that he wishes to re-introduce certain aggressive techniques of interrogation such as waterboarding.  That is very soon, some (or more than before) Russians, ISIS sympathizers, and other ‘black hats’ may have many more opportunities to experience the sensation of drowning followed by regurgitation, of both phlegm and words.  All of those Guantanamo Bay extradites to black sites may suddenly find that sleep deprivation and psychoactive drugs are weak sauce compared to pliers on the fingernails.  If you are presently anywhere from unsettled to outraged then the descriptive language has had its effect.  I will remark as a disclaimer that I do not believe someone in custody, particularly in wartime, with probable cause of being a terrorist or spy should be handled the same way that a little old lady trying to get a reverse mortgage on her house should be, but there are ways of getting to the bottom of things without scraping the bottom of the barrel ethically.  In fact, one of the best ways, to really get to the heart of what someone thinks, and why they think that way is to ask good questions, even unabashedly personal questions that do not indict the listener or person being questioned directly but still get to the heart of the matter and maybe in tell a story along the way…"What do you think? There was a man who had two sons…” (Matt. 21:28)