Teribus has said in his post what I wanted to, and I'm glad to see other people understand the difference between, modern interrogation techniques, and how they actually work,and torture.

Put bluntly the name of the game is confusion, and the trick is how to bring that confusion about. People can be beaten/injured into a confused state, which I do not agree with. Sleep deprivation etc can also bring about the same results, after the interrogation people can always catch up on sleep.

Don, there is one simple flaw in your, There was no dirty bomb and no explosives in the Statue of Liberty. The terrorist sits in his cell and laughs uproariously at those who had tortured him. "Gotcha!!", theory.

The small pox was going to happen any way, do you want people to accept the inevitable and do nothing? Bit defeatist do you not think?

In general interrogators and collators are not stupid, yes some may run off on wild goose chase's, but in general only if that fits the M.O. of the group that person who was interrogated belongs to.

Such an example could be the arms smuggling to Ireland, popular method was shipping, so if some one says arms are going to be flown over, it would raise alarm bells.

Information,name,places,times and dates all details given out during interrogation,collators use this, simple example, if A say's he and B were at a place at X time, compare that to other statements from the rest of the people.

That may not be useful to the man on the street, but many a terrorist from N.I. got caught by the police using the same collated intelligence. It does work,it either eliminates or confirms the suspect from a line of inquiry.

Because there is no great arms find or bombs uncovered do not be fooled into thinking that this is because the interrogation methods do not get vital info. It is the info that such interrogation gets that prevents the arms being shipped or bombs planted in the first place.

Do not forget human nature,piss the prisoner off enough and he may spill the beans without realising it. To use your example the prisoner may say F--- you if the bombs don't get ya the small pox will. Not all terrorist are brain boxes or hardened men, they do make mistakes.

My argument is this I would rather have modern day interrogation methods used, I do not agree with the use of torture techniques of the past. The questions put are not clever they are the dilemma that faces those in charge of our security every day. Which are backed up by the real threats from Bin Laden, a man who says there will be more Sept 11 atrocities. Quite possibly the next could involve the release of small pox, any ideas how we prepare for that or how to stop it?

A good start would get as much intelligence as you can.