In a recent article in the Atlantic, journalist and author Joshua E. S. Phillips writes about how the real legacy of the controversial film Zero Dark Thirty may be in interrogation rooms as the harshness of the interrogations depicted in the film has registered with the American public and, more importantly, policy makers.
in 2007, Supreme Court Justice Scalia cited an episode of 24 in which agent Jack Bauer saves Los Angeles from terrorists as proof that torture works. The TV series 24 was also used in interrogation training during the Bush/Cheney years.
I can understand how the perceptions of the American public can be swayed by dramatized interrogations, but one would hope that our elected and military leaders would do more homework and crack a book, such as Fear Up Harsh by Tony Lagouranis and How to Break a Terrorist by Matthew Alexander that demonstrate the ineffectiveness of enhanced interrogation techniques.
