Everything I Need To Know About Current Events, I Learned Wednesday Night

The first lesson came from Jericho. That lesson being that the Chinese are the real enemy. Or maybe the Koreans. They weren't real specific about that one. The other lesson from Jericho is that Skeet Ulrich can do anything. He can perform a tracheotomy on a child or pull the flight recorder from a crashed airliner. The most important lesson was one that everyone should know by now. Your neighbors are greedy, dumb panicky jerks. They will screw you over for a warm place to shit and clean out your grocery store without so much as a thank you.

Next we learned effective interrogation techniques from Lost. Let me tell you, from a professional aspect, The Others put on a clinic of how to break high level detainees. Juliet used the "We Know All"combined with the "File and Dossier" approach after hammering Jack with control questions and behavior modification drills.

Sawyer got plenty of behavior modification with his little Skinner Box cage. It seems fairly obvious that the kid Karl, from the other cage, will be playing the Peter Graves role in the Others' version of Stalag 17.

An interrogator's delight is for a subject to start showing off or demonstrating an overcompensation. It reveals a psychological weakness. Sawyer did both.

Kate got her a purty dress. Another great approach is one of futility. Show someone the complete power you hold over them. People generally cooperate with those who have complete control over them. From FM 34-52:
Making the situation appear hopeless allows the source to rationalize his actions, especially if that action is cooperating with the interrogator. When employing this technique, the interrogator must not only be fortified with factual information, but he should also be aware of, and be able to exploit, the source's psychological, moral, and sociological weaknesses.

The upshot of the episode was that psychologically breaking someone is far more effective than just plain torturing them.

Finally, South Park taught us that if you aren't careful, defeating the thing you hate, may turn into the thing that you hate.