More on "Churchill vs. Cheney"

Andrew Sullivan posted an update to his post on the use of torture by the U.S., compared with the refusal of the British to use torture during World War II. Darius Rejali, who wrote the book Torture and Democracy, sent Sullivan an e-mail about the "London Cage," saying:

There is a significant difference between the German prisoners in the cage and the German spies captured by the British during World War II. The Germans in the cage were accused of war crimes, and the techniques was used to coerce confessions of guilt. It didn’t matter if what they said was true, and even then the success rate of the cage was terrible.

The Cage held 3573 prisoners. They were accused of war crimes. The techniques were designed to coerce confessions of guilt. But only about 1000 confessions, false or true, were coerced – either by torture or “not torture”. That is 70% refused to confess anything. These are, as I say in the book, surprisingly dismal results but pretty much in line with other dismal results for false confessions including Korean and Chinese torture during the Korean War and French ancien regime torture (which was even poorer). And these are cases where people don’t care if the information is true or false. They just want the confession.


UPDATE: More from Darius Rejali on the the London Cage here.