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At Constitution Center, Panel Agrees That Torture Interrogation is Misguided

By Dan Wing

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- The National Constitution Center hosted a discussion this afternoon on the topic of the United States' methods of capturing, detaining, and interrogating suspected terrorists.

The discussion was headlined by two members of a bipartisan task force put together by the Constitution Project that spent more than two years researching and analyzing the past and current treatment of suspected terrorists.  Both said that so-called "enhanced" interrogation techniques were counterproductive in the fight against terrorism.

David Irvine (at left in photo) -- a former Republican state legislator and retired US Army brigadier general who also taught prisoner-of-war interrogation and military law -- detailed some of the tactics that the commission found to be widespread over the past decade.

He described tactics that included waterboarding, beatings, sleep and food deprivation, as well as temperature manipulation -- all tactics that Irvine says produce unreliable results.

"There are people who will tell me whatever they think I want to hear if it will make the pain stop. There are other people who will not tell me anything, no matter how much pain I subject them to, to the point of death," he notes.

Irvine also asked a simple question of people who support enhanced interrogation tactics:

"Why don't we apply it in ordinary, domestic criminal law? Why don't we waterboard suspected kidnappers?"


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