Pierrot le fou is a 1965 movie based on an American novel "Obsession" realised by French director jean-Luc Godard... If my recollection is correct, there is a scene in it, where Pierrot is subjected to "waterboarding"... The technique is not new. But it amounts to torture nonetheless... The Chinese had a different water torture... By all account, all these devices are designed to inflict pain or psychological disturbances beyond the "acceptable". None of these are efficient in extracting information of value... for several reasons, one of which being that should the enemy be aware of one of their operatives being arrested, they would move camp or take steps to counteract any possibility of their operative giving any "accurate" information.

The recent case of the "double agent" "fooling" his Yemeni handlers is quite interesting... The US handlers would be very aware of who-is-fooling-who syndrome in regard to "double agents"... Thus, this is why they had to tell us that the person was not a double agent but an operative from Saudi Arabia who fooled the Yemenis... This is more effective than torturing dedicated operatives... but harder to pull off. In my view, the US is gloating a bit too much about how they got 'results" there too. May be they've set a honey trap to catch some people trying to revenge what happened... Who knows...:

----------------------

After spending weeks at the center of Al Qaeda’s most dangerous affiliate, the intelligence agent provided critical information that permitted the C.I.A. to direct the drone strike on Sunday that killed Fahd Mohammed Ahmed al-Quso, the group’s external operations director and a suspect in the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole, an American destroyer, in Yemen in 2000.

He also handed over the bomb, designed by the group’s top explosives expert to be undetectable at airport security checks, to the F.B.I., which is analyzing its properties at its laboratory at Quantico, Va. The agent is now safe in Saudi Arabia, officials said. The bombing plot was kept secret for weeks by the C.I.A. and other agencies because they feared retaliation against the agent and his family — not, as some commentators have suggested, because the Obama administration wanted to schedule an announcement of the foiled plot, American officials said.

Officials said Tuesday night that the risk to the agent and his relatives had now been “mitigated,” evidently by moving both him and his family to safe locations.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/09/world/middleeast/suicide-mission-volun...      

Washington: The Central Intelligence Agency took top al-Qaeda suspects close "to the point of death" by drowning them in water-filled baths during interrogation sessions in the years that followed the September 11 attacks, far beyond the waterboarding details so far revealed, according to an intelligence source.

The description of the torture meted out to at least two leading al-Qaeda suspects, including the alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, far exceeds the conventional understanding of waterboarding, or "simulated drowning" so far admitted by the CIA.

"They weren't just pouring water over their heads or over a cloth," said the source who has first-hand knowledge of the period. "They were holding them under water until the point of death, with a doctor present to make sure they did not go too far. This was real torture."

...

One might well ask whether publishing an ostensibly serious book justifying torture could even happen anywhere but in the United States. The contributors are all retired now with generous pensions and lucrative second career positions in the National Security industry. But regrettably their legacy endures. Outright lying and plausible dissimulating continue to be the name of the game in Washington.

Recent media reports reveal that 52 intelligence analysts working out of the U.S. military’s Central Command and Defense Intelligence Agency have filed a formal complaint with the Pentagon inspector general claiming that reports on the war against ISIS have been routinely altered by senior officials to make them more optimistic. They describe their work environment as “Stalinist” and if what they allege is true, it confirms that even the White House doesn’t know what the Defense Department is actually doing in Syria.

Kudos to the analysts, but some earlier dissidents on the issue were forced to resign, and they will all certainly be punished for speaking out. And I have to believe that Tenet, Goss, McLaughlin, Morell, and Rodriguez will not think well of them for breaking the code of omerta that all too often prevails in intelligence circles.

Philip Giraldi, a former CIA officer, is executive director of the Council for the National Interest.

read more http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-cias-torture-defenders/