Waterboarding

To whom do we owe the CIA’s interrogation regimen? According to ABC News, “the CIA's secret water boarding program was designed and assured to be safe by two well-paid psychologists now working out of an unmarked office building in Spokane, Washington.” Bruce Jessen and Jim Mitchell, both former military officers, founded Mitchell Jessen and Associates and “together designed and implemented the CIA’s interrogation program.” Their associates say that they “boasted” of making $1,000 a day from the CIA. Neither had any experience as interrogators before the CIA hired them.

I very much doubt that the CIA paid Jessen and Mitchell for the water board design. If they did they were very stupid because it has been in use by the police in Latin American countries for many years and they know it. If they didn't, they should have read,“O Plata O Plomo?” (Silver or Lead?) by James Kuykendall (2005). Kuykendall, a top DEA agent, was even present while the Mexican police interrogated a couple of the major narcotics traffickers by use of this technique.

Protection from Pirates

Testifying before a key senate committee, Richard Phillips, the cargo-ship captain whose capture by pirates triggered a dramatic U.S. Navy rescue off the coast of Africa, called on the federal government Thursday to provide military escorts for international shipping vessels.
It seems to me that this would be a long and extremely expensive undertaking. Would it not be better and more cost effective for the vessel owners to employ private security companies to handle their own protection. I am sure that if the pirates were aware, that in the future, armed professionals were on board, they would quickly desist in their attempts to highjack ships and have to look for another and safer source of income.