24

Earlier this year in a report in the February 19 and 26 New Yorker, Jane Mayer talks about the use of torture on the TV show 24, featuring the unshakeable patriot Jack Bauer, who goes round foiling plots to nuke bits of America. According to the Parents Television Council there were 67 incidents of torture in the first 5 seasons of this show. Those who have watched it know that the torture almost always works in breaking the baddie and in getting much needed information—except with Jack, who was tortured for two years by the Chinese and has bounced back to annoy evil terrorists as if he'd experienced nothing more than an uncomfortably hot shower and too many repeats of Play School.

Some high up US army interrogation types actually went to meet with the producers of 24. Not, as you might think, to congratulate them on their patriotism.

Here are some words from one of the Army folk, Tony Lagouranis, a former interrogator in Iraq:

People watch the shows, and then walk into the interrogation booths and do the same things they've just seen...In Iraq, I never saw pain produce intelligence. I worked with someone who used waterboarding [an interrogation method involving the repeated near-drowning of a suspect]. I used severe hypothermia, dogs, and sleep deprivation. I saw suspects after soldiers had gone into their homes and broken their bones, or made them sit on a Humvee's hot exhaust pipes until they got third-degree burns. Nothing happened...

[Some people] gave confessions. But they just told us what we already knew. It never opened up a stream of new information...physical pain can strengthen the resolve to clam up.

The show is a bit of action based fluff and fun, if you realize you are watching fantasy. Unfortunately, many people don't—including people being trained for war in Iraq. That's why the US interrogators were complaining, and it bothers me, too.