Everything that US interrogators learned in order to question Iraqi detainees they learned from watching Jack Bauer on the television show 24.

What sort of training did you go through when learning how to interrogate?

We had some classroom training, we'd get Power Point presentations on what interrogation should be, but then we'd spend maybe a minute in the interrogation booth with a role player who was an instructor and we'd interrogate. And mostly we were judged on the form of our questions, whether or not we moved from question to question logically. It really didn't have to do with breaking the prisoner. It didn't have to do with coercion or reproaches, which in Iraq is pretty much all you did. So we really weren't trained at all for the mission we had in Iraq.

And that's where television came into play?

The approaches that we were taught we could use, but we were encouraged to use more extreme tactics. We didn't have training in the more extreme tactics so people turned to television to learn what those might be.

Our military is not only broken it is trying too hard to be like the cool kids on television.

The idea that these soldiers were left to glean interrogation techniques from television is a completely surreal situation. And there was nobody minding the store? Nobody there to say, "Hey guys. we can't do that in real life. That only works in the movies."

There is absolutely no excuse for this kind of permissive situation existing in how our soldiers interact with our prisoners of war. These individuals should have received extensive training and been supervised at every level.

This should be investigated and the individuals who let this happen should be court martialed, or impeached!