Reply #70: Mythbusters have taken on torture, but

[kentauros]

it was the "Chinese Water Torture" method. They used one of their women crew members as a test subject. I don't recall if they did call it torture in the end, but she certainly did if only for the reasons that she was close to panic by the end of about an hour and a half.

As with all of their stunts, they urge people "not to try this at home" so that's probably why they haven't done any other torture techniques that are far more dangerous, like waterboarding.

Somewhere I have a non-sport trading card set of "Tortures of the World" that has a nice little graphic of the torture with info on the back. There are some nasty things out there that we do to our fellow humans for a little bit of info ( or perceived "safety.")

One other reason I can think of that they continue to use this "technique" for is also psychological against the other prisoners. Allowing them to hear the screams and whatever else go a long way in psychological torture and breaking, too. Simply putting a black bag over someone's head and manhandling them out of their cell also has a big effect on their panic and reactions.

I'm not a professional in the psychological fields, so I may be wrong on some of these counts of effects on people. But I do recall some interviews with previous detainees of Guantanimo speaking of these kinds of psychological techniques. There was also a great British "reality show" called Spy where the people picked for it had to go through some psychological "breaking" in the beginning, too. Not torture, but use of black bags on their heads as they were "kidnapped" without warning in the middle of the night, yelling, manhandling, interrogation, and similar things. Nothing I'd want to go through whether I had an inkling of an idea that it would happen or not.

What I don't understand is why there are no available films of this in action, even of the instances of CIA agents being "tested" with it. Seems like that would work very much in Congress' favor when interrogating potential AGs...