Defense bigs ask '24' to cool it on torture

NY Daily News ^ | 02/11/2007 | OWEN MORITZ

[JohnSheppard]

The grossly graphic torture scenes in Fox's highly rated series "24" are encouraging abuses in Iraq, a brigadier general and three top military and FBI interrogators claim.

The four flew to Los Angeles in November to meet with the staff of the show. They said it is hurting efforts to train recruits in effective interrogation techniques and is damaging the image of the U.S. around the world, according The New Yorker.

"I'd like them to stop," Army Brig. Gen. Patrick Finnegan, dean of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, told the magazine.

Finnegan and others told the show's creative team that the torture depicted in "24" never works in real life, and by airing such scenes, they're encouraging military personnel to act illegally.

"People watch the shows, and then walk into the interrogation booths and do the same things they've just seen," said Tony Lagouranis, who was a U.S. Army interrogator in Iraq and attended the meeting.

[neodad]

Maybe one reason it's highly rated is that the majority of Americans enjoy watching Jack Bauer do what we wish our government would do to terrorists.

[kinghorse]

I gotta chuckle out of that one. Stunts performed by professionals. Please do not try this at war.

[Tarpon]

Ping for the truth ...

[zendari]

Bunch of liberal pansies.

[John Jorsett]

If your interrogation personnel can't separate real life from a television show, you either need to train them better or recruit people who aren't lunkheads. I work with computers and I know most of what you see on TV in terms of computers is nothing like what's actually possible or realistic.

[jude24]

Maybe one reason it's highly rated is that the majority of Americans enjoy watching Jack Bauer do what we wish our government would do to terrorists.

Frankly, I don't care what "the majority of Americans" think. An Army Brigadier general has the credibility to say that torture like in 24 doesn't work.

Doesn't mean I'll stop watching 24, however. It's entertainment, not reality.

I did find interesting, however, this statement:

Joe Navarro, an FBI interrogation expert who was at the meeting, said he wouldn't want anyone like Bauer on his team. "Only a psychopath can torture and be unaffected," he said. "You don't want people like that in your organization. They are untrustworthy, and tend to have grotesque other problems."

That's sorta Jack Bauer's story - wrestling with his demons after torturing people. It did profoundly affect him.

[Lancey Howard]

Good Lord!
How long will it take to get rid of this sissified Clinton flotsam?

[Ladysmith]

No kidding! We need a heck of a lot more Jack Bauers in the defense department.

[rlmorel]

Boy, you hit the nail on the head there!

[rellimpank]

---more commentary on the same subject--

--http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1782588/posts

[jude24]

How long will it take to get rid of this sissified Clinton flotsam?

Opposing torture - and thereby abiding by the Geneva Conventions - makes one "sissified Clinton flotsam"? You talk tough in the anonymity of the Internet, but given a choice between a man who spent his career defending his country and some anonymous keyboard pontificator, I pick the Brigadier General.

[dforest]

Maybe many other TV shows would like to respond to the blatant sexual content because it is ruining the minds of our children.

[Antonello]

Oh please. They aren't afraid the troops are going to mistake 24 as a training film. What they're really worried about is that it is putting the concept of the government using torture into the minds of the public.

Instead, this pathetic, deceptive 'reason' for wanting the scenes yanked makes it look like they think the military is full of weak-minded, poorly disciplined couch potatoes who's training can be easily negated by a freakin' TV show, for crying out load.

[wizecrakker]

So did the military have problems with M-60 gunners wanting to shoot from the hip, while Rambo was strutting across the bigscreen?

[Lancey Howard]

Yeah, I'm not surprised.
Aren't you the young law school student who thinks the judge is always right?

[Squawk 8888]

I'm always amazed at how the computers on TV make lots of beeping noises and flash lots of pictures during a search. And don't get me started on how they seem to take all day to perform a simple index search- perhaps CTU should outsource their work to Google ;-)

[IronJack]

Often, movies express a latent or unfufilled desire held by the ticket-buying public. We want to see a simple solution to the overly complicated tangle in Iraq. We want answers, not obfuscation. The escapist world of cinema and TV provide that.

So I would see "24" as a reflection of society's sentiments. And if it's wildly popular, that should tell somebody something.

[my_pointy_head_is_sharp]

Read The Politics of the Man Behind '24'. Great article.

Is it just me, or does this season seem more violent and brutal than past seasons?

[sure_fine]

"Maybe one reason it's highly rated is that the majority of Americans enjoy watching Jack Bauer do what we wish our government would do to terrorists."



works for me