Financially, Pos was sure in the right place at the right time, no?

He was, although being that he was in the wrong place at the wrong time--basically--every other respect, it's not really a great trade-off.

Sandusky is presumably being played by Jeffrey Jones.

D'oh!

So, aside from critical analysis of ZDT, how graphic is it? If you're slightly (or more) squeamish about blood and gore, is it a tolerable movie?

There is virtually no blood. The torture consists of sleep deprivation, humiliation, and water boarding for the most part. Government torture wasn't at the Saw/Hostel level of tortue or anything like that. The assault on the compound is largely bloodless and the blood isn't the John Ramboesque level of blood.

Cool, thanks, McCoy. Not that what you describe is pleasant but Saw/Hostel is what I was thinking. I find I simply can't take that level of gore.

My problem with Argo was that the hostage characters were awful, both written and on the screen. They each had one characteristic (leader, wife, coward, goofy, Clea Duvall's face) and that was it and they were played at such a subdued level compared to the people in Hollywood or in Washington. It would have been a much better movie if they felt like people.

I get this notion, but I have never felt like the case against torture was that it was ineffective. Whether it is effective or ineffective should be irrelevant. We should be repulsed by it because it is grossly immoral, and from what I have read (still haven't seen the film yet), the film does a good job showing how repulsive torture can be.

But, a lot of the most effective "torture" is not really particularly repulsive, and not clearly immoral to my eyes.

If you read the Gulag Archipelago, you see how the NKVD/MVD could break people down without laying a finger on them (not to say they didn't do it the other way). But, simple sleep deprivation, disorientation, and effective interrogation can achieve an awful lot, and generally produces less false info than physical torture.

(Lost in Translation) There's no sense of pain, of loss. No sense of desire in the middle aged man for the beautiful young woman. What a fraud that was.


Wow, as a guy relatively the same age as Murray, I absolutely felt his pain. I thought Murray was perfect in his relationship with ScarJo -- a man who doesn't want to make an ass of himself, who has bonded with this woman and knows that the second he tries anything sexual it will break the magic of the bond. He needed her companionship and to have that, he had to keep in bounds, if it were.

That's how I saw it.

I get this notion, but I have never felt like the case against torture was that it was ineffective. Whether it is effective or ineffective should be irrelevant.

The case WITHIN intelligence agencies has more been that torture doesn't work not that it is immoral- of course some of that is an argument geared for your audience- if you need to convince your boss that you shouldn't use torture and your boss is Dick Cheney, arguing that torture is immoral is simply going to get you kicked out the door, arguing that it is ineffective and doesn't work might work (it didn't work in the case f the real world Cheney, but it is an argument that could work on an amoral asshat, whereas the morality argument never ever will)

Anyway, in most of the world, most of history torture has never been about gaining accurate information,it's about punishment and deterrence. The Romans didn't nail rebels to a cross to die slow agonizing deaths in public to get information, they did it to terrorize the populace into line- that has been the primary role of torture throughout history.

You have to remember that there are people in this Country who said things like, "Every now and then we should throw some small pissant country up against the wall just to show that we mean business" To people with that mindset whether or not good intelligence comes out of Gitmo is secondary in their minds to the dissemination of the fact to our adversaries/potential adversaries that we just might catch them and throw them into a torture ridden hell hole for the rest of their natural lives

So in other words, ZDT is like Starship Troopers in that you can't tell if they're kidding or not?

How on earth can you not tell that Starship Troopers is kidding?

#159 I've felt that the secret to Starship Troopers more or less working is that they didn't tell the actors they were kidding.

How on earth can you not tell that Starship Troopers is kidding?

There are many things that impress me about Denise Richards... her acting chops aren't among them.

EDIT-not-really-an-edit: coke to RonJ2

If you read the Gulag Archipelago, you see how the NKVD/MVD could break people down without laying a finger on them (not to say they didn't do it the other way). But, simple sleep deprivation, disorientation, and effective interrogation can achieve an awful lot, and generally produces less false info than physical torture.

That kind of torture is just as immoral as the rack and thumbscrews, in my opinion. As you note, a lot of NKVD, Gestapo, Khmer Rouge, etc. torture was of that variety. Both Germans and Japanese were put to death after WWII for using such techniques.

#159 I've felt that the secret to Starship Troopers more or less working is that they didn't tell the actors they were kidding.

I think Doogie Howser figured it out... The brilliance of that movie is it works as an entertaining action movie, too. Not quite as good as Robocop but Robocop sets a ridiculously high bar.

So in other words, ZDT is like Starship Troopers in that you can't tell if they're kidding or not?

In what way is it unclear that they were kidding in Starship Troopers?

Sandusky is presumably being played by Jeffrey Jones.

Depends if you want a method actor (Jones), or someone with experience portraying Sandusky, Jason Sudeikis

If someone can pick up a mil or three for a months work, or hang out with fun people in Rio and get paid, more power to them. It's reasonable to expect your rep as an artist to take a hit, though, in some measure because when you're always working, and don't distinguish between things of value and utter shite, your work suffers. I don't know anyone for whom that's not true. Imagine if between novels Pynchon was writing commerical jingles. There's the occasional Dickens, but everyone else needs a break, or they pay.

Big-name actors actually "sell out" all the time; tons are doing voiceover work for commercials. Jon Hamm did Mercedes, Julia Roberts did AOL, George Clooney has done Budweiser and AT&T, Gene Hackman did Lowes, John Goodman did Dunkin Donuts, the list goes on and on and on.

It's gobs of money for a few hours of work they can do in their underwear, without the stigma of selling out. It used to be that they'd go to Japan to hawk products (like Bill Murray's character in Lost in Translation). Brad Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio, Harrison Ford, guys you'd never dream of seeing in commercials at the peak of their careers, all sold out in Japan. I suppose the YouTube age has forced them into voiceover work.

That kind of torture is just as immoral as the rack and thumbscrews, in my opinion. As you note, a lot of NKVD, Gestapo, Khmer Rouge, etc. torture was of that variety. Both Germans and Japanese were put to death after WWII for using such techniques.

I'm not so certain. If the "torture" inflicts no pain, and no lasting harm to the person, and generates accurate results, I don't see why it is always immoral.

I mean, it's certainly immoral for the purposes the MVD/NKVD used (getting false confessions to non-existent crimes). But, as part of legitimate intelligence work?

A few years back, when I was in grad school, me and a few other students ended up taking a seminar that our department taught at the War College in Fort Leavenworth as part of an arrangement with the military. So we were in class for a semester with about 25 Special Forces guys who were doing their needed advancement work.

We were talking about torture at one point, and one of the SF guys, who apparently had to undergo what you might call "torture training," said that if he had to choose between being waterboarded and undergoing sleep deprivation, he'd choose the former every time. Said that sleep deprivation was absolutely brutal, by far the worst thing he had to endure as part of his training.

Always found that interesting.

We were talking about torture at one point, and one of the SF guys, who apparently had to undergo what you might call "torture training," said that if he had to choose between being waterboarded and undergoing sleep deprivation, he'd choose the former every time. Said that sleep deprivation was absolutely brutal, by far the worst thing he had to endure as part of his training.

Always found that interesting.

Yes. It's very effective at totally discombobulating a person. That's why it works.

The question is not whether it's brutal; most of war is brutal. It's not more brutal than blowing some one up with a HE shell, which is permitted. The question is whether it is moral in the context of warfare, or quasi-warfare (anti-terrorism, military intelligence, etc.).

Well that was fast. Posnanski is leaving Sports on Earth for NBC.

Both Germans and Japanese were put to death after WWII for using such techniques.

You got a cite for that? Because the Germans and Japanese very rarely stopped at that sort of thing. Summary execution was part and parcel of it, once they were done with the questioning. So if you can show me where there was an execution that was solely for sleep deprivation, etc., I would be interested to see it.

Dying ain't much of a living, boy.

I mean, it's certainly immoral for the purposes the MVD/NKVD used (getting false confessions to non-existent crimes). But, as part of legitimate intelligence work?

So the ends justify the means?

You got a cite for that? Because the Germans and Japanese very rarely stopped at that sort of thing. Summary execution was part and parcel of it, once they were done with the questioning. So if you can show me where there was an execution that was solely for sleep deprivation, etc., I would be interested to see it.

Concur.

We were talking about torture at one point, and one of the SF guys, who apparently had to undergo what you might call "torture training," said that if he had to choose between being waterboarded and undergoing sleep deprivation, he'd choose the former every time. Said that sleep deprivation was absolutely brutal, by far the worst thing he had to endure as part of his training.

Always found that interesting.

Yes. It's very effective at totally discombobulating a person. That's why it works.

Sleep deprivation is far more likely to cause lasting harm or death than waterboarding. A close friend of mine was waterboarded in the course of his military training; he described it as absolutely terrifying while it was happening, but within an hour of it ending, you're pretty much OK.

In other acting news, Tony Soprano's daughter has gotten engaged to Lenny Dykstra's son.

Sleep deprivation is far more likely to cause lasting harm or death than waterboarding.

They do it routinely as part of Special Forces training, i.e. multi-day missions without sleep. It can't be that damaging.

In any case, when we're talking about interrogating people in serious situations, you're not going to be 100% on in treating the subjects nicely. The biggest worry I have in a violent situation like waterboarding is what it causes and selects for in my interrogators. I don't want my intelligence folks being a bunch of sadists.

Well, you don't want them to be a bunch of masochists. That would simply confuse the prisoner.

Well, you don't want them to be a bunch of masochists. That would simply confuse the prisoner.

:-)

The moral line, to me, shifts if it is war or not. Which is what makes all this hard to judge - are we at war or not? My guess is that a large percentage of the folks arguing the anti-waterboarding, anti-sleep deprivation angle would also say we aren't currently at war while those arguing the other side of it would say that we are at war.

During a declared war - WWII, for example - I could go along with pretty severe methods to generate accurate intelligence. Methods that I would in no way support, no matter their efficacy, as a means of crime fighting or peacetime spying. As stated above, war is hell and horrible, disgusting and otherwise immoral acts are not only condoned but used with abandon. Perhaps it should not be so, but it is.

So, the question then, if you have an Al-Queda bad guy in your interrogation room: do you and he exist in a state of war?

In war you have at least two sides of combatants. If you condone torture and use torture then it is likely the other side will do the same to their prisoners. I doubt most sides want that stuff happening to their side or themselves which is also why for the most part gas didn't get used in WWII in combat situations despite the Nazi showing they weren't afraid to use poisonous gas.

Sleep deprivation is far more likely to cause lasting harm or death than waterboarding.

They do it routinely as part of Special Forces training, i.e. multi-day missions without sleep. It can't be that damaging.

The dose makes the poison. A couple days here or there is something most folks can recover from, and that's generally all you'd need for interrogations. Even tough guys get pretty soft after a few days with no sleep. Once you start getting into longer periods, sleep deprivation can cause psychosis and ultimately death.

They do it routinely as part of Special Forces training, i.e. multi-day missions without sleep. It can't be that damaging.

Yes, because staying up for a couple days without being able to get much sleep is the same as sleep-deprivation + stress positions used for torture. You win the "most facile comparison" prize for the thread.

I can't believe I'm saying this, but discussing with McCoy how much Argo did or didn't suck was actually more enjoyable than where this thread has ended up.

The dose makes the poison. A couple days here or there is something most folks can recover from, and that's generally all you'd need for interrogations. Even tough guys get pretty soft after a few days with no sleep. Once you start getting into longer periods, sleep deprivation can cause psychosis and ultimately death.

Concur. I'd agree that prolonged deprivation crosses the line to torture.

Yes, because staying up for a couple days without being able to get much sleep is the same as sleep-deprivation + stress positions used for torture. You win the "most facile comparison" prize for the thread.

They don't need to keep you up for more than a couple of days to break 99% of people. No stress positions needed. Just have them stand in a room, with someone to wake them if they sleep. They'll even be nice to you sometimes, e.g. give you a good meal with plenty of booze, to get you talking.

I've seen Argo, Lincoln, and Les Mis. All of them were good, none GREAT. Argo was the most entertaining and just solid all the way around. Lincoln has some flaws, but DDL is amazing, and the other actors are very, very good. I have mixed feelings about Les Mis. Russell Crowe is distractingly bad, and I didn't like the cinematography. It felt oddly cramped. I also thought the pacing was a little odd. But Hathaway was great and the other actors were very good.

I really enjoyed Les Mis. But then, I'm a sucker for earnest, overly emotive bombast. Crowe was really distracting, though.

Of the best picture nominees I still need to see Silver Linings Playbook, Life of Pi, and Amour. I should do SLP and Amour back to back for some mood whiplash.

Sleep deprivation is far more likely to cause lasting harm or death than waterboarding.

They do it routinely as part of Special Forces training, i.e. multi-day missions without sleep. It can't be that damaging.

The dose makes the poison. A couple days here or there is something most folks can recover from, and that's generally all you'd need for interrogations. Even tough guys get pretty soft after a few days with no sleep. Once you start getting into longer periods, sleep deprivation can cause psychosis and ultimately death.

another key is that even small periods of REM sleep, even as short as 2-3 minutes can do wonders in warding off psychosis- if you are sleep depriving someone for the purpose of torture, you are not even gonna let them get that- in studies that makes a big difference- there's actually a huge difference between 48 straight hours with no REM sleep and 24 hours no REM, Rem for 2 minutes, 24 hours no REM.

I usually have no idea what I'm talking about when it comes to movies, so I'm glad my reading of Les Mis (re: Crowe) is one that was obvious to others.

Of course, that movie would have had to have been pretty vigorously awful for me not to love it, so in a general sense I'm not even going to bother trying to evaluate it objectively. It was impressive that it actually got me to forget my intense (and largely baffling) dislike of Eddie Redmayne for a couple hours...but the Crowe thing was unavoidable.

You got a cite for that? Because the Germans and Japanese very rarely stopped at that sort of thing. Summary execution was part and parcel of it, once they were done with the questioning. So if you can show me where there was an execution that was solely for sleep deprivation, etc., I would be interested to see it.

Some citations:

Japanese war crimes trials and executions for waterboarding: Link. Another link.

Nazi war crimes trials for waterboarding and sleep deprivation: Link

The Mississippi Supreme Court in 1926 defined waterboarding as torture: Link.

U.S. prosecutions of American soldiers who waterboarded Filipinos during the 1899-1901 Filipino Insurrection: Link

another key is that even small periods of REM sleep, even as short as 2-3 minutes can do wonders in warding off psychosis- if you are sleep depriving someone for the purpose of torture, you are not even gonna let them get that- in studies that makes a big difference- there's actually a huge difference between 48 straight hours with no REM sleep and 24 hours no REM, Rem for 2 minutes, 24 hours no REM.

Is it sad that I was about to make a similar comment, and then realized that my knowledge in the area is almost entirely grounded in a Star Trek TNG episode?

Of course, that movie would have had to have been pretty vigorously awful for me not to love it

Yeah, same here. I'm a sucker for Les Mis, when I got out of the theater I wanted to go throw up some barricades.

realized that my knowledge in the area is almost entirely grounded in a Star Trek TNG episode?

THERE. ARE. FOUR. LIGHTS.

another key is that even small periods of REM sleep, even as short as 2-3 minutes can do wonders in warding off psychosis- if you are sleep depriving someone for the purpose of torture, you are not even gonna let them get that- in studies that makes a big difference- there's actually a huge difference between 48 straight hours with no REM sleep and 24 hours no REM, Rem for 2 minutes, 24 hours no REM.

Why don't you just admit you hate America and want the terrorists to kill us all because you hate freedom?

I'm glad I lived through the early-aughts.

Is it sad that I was about to make a similar comment, and then realized that my knowledge in the area is almost entirely grounded in a Star Trek TNG episode?

I don't recall that ep

my knowledge is almost entirely grounded in a textbook chapter I read in college over 20 years ago

edit after looking up at 192 I now remember that episode... B5 actually did it better when Sheridan was captured... among other things the guards beat the crap out of him before the interrogator started in, the Cardassians OTOH were practically pussies.

Posnanski is leaving Sports on Earth (after less than a year, just like SI) and joining NBC.

It's as if he just can't settle down since he left the Kansas City Star; Sports on Earth seemed the perfect platform for him.

I don't recall that ep

"Night Terrors". As it's a Troi heavy episode it's perhaps best that you can't remember. The ship is stranded and no one's getting REM sleep, so they all go crazy and start killing each other. As Data has no soul (and therefore doesn't need REM sleep), he saves the day.

Sleep deprivation will really mess up your head.

I have super-bad sleep apnea (150+ incidents an hour before I got my CPAP), and before I was diagnosed and treated, I'd spend entire days in a confused fog.

THERE. ARE. FOUR. LIGHTS.

You do not mess with someone who stabbed a dude through the heart in a bar fight.

You do not mess with someone who stabbed a dude through the heart in a bar fight.

I think you mean a guy who got stabbed through the heart in a bar fight.

Unless you're saying not to mess with a Nausicaan. Which is probably good advice as well.

"Night Terrors". As it's a Troi heavy episode it's perhaps best that you can't remember. The ship is stranded and no one's getting REM sleep, so they all go crazy and start killing each other. As Data has no soul (and therefore doesn't need REM sleep), he saves the day.

I think that's a different episode --

THERE. ARE. FOUR. LIGHTS is from Chain of Command -- Picard is being tortured by the Cardassians and his interrogator (who employs sleep and sensory deprivation) is trying to break him by getting him to say there are five lights, not four.

Night Terrors involves the enterprise stuck in a Tichon's rift with another ship and the key to getting out is troi recognizing that the two lights/one moon circling is actually symbolizing the needed hydrogen to get both ships out of the rift.

....and I'm somewhat embarrassed to say that I had to google none of that -- though, I'm only 80% sure the Picard/Cardassian episode (I think it's a two parter) is called 'Chain of Command'.