This is a really cool study. In one experiment, Kassin asked volunteers to perform a challenging task on a computer but warned them not to touch the "Alt" key or risk damaging a computer. Volunteers were told that the computer had been damaged and were asked whether they hit the banned key. In reality, the volunteer did nothing wrong. Most volunteers denied it, but as the initial task they were given was made difficult, they became less sure because they were distracted. When researchers had confederates lie about having seen the volunteers hit the Alt key, the number of people who confessed went up to 100 percent. Every stage of increased pressure led ever larger numbers of volunteers to believe they were really guilty.
Don't think of cheney's law, or of this: And Attorney General Ashcroft then stunned me. He lifted his head off the pillow and in very strong terms expressed his view of the matter, rich in both substance and fact, which stunned me — drawn from the hour-long meeting we’d had a week earlier — and in very strong terms expressed himself, and then laid his head back down on the pillow, seemed spent, and said to them, But that doesn’t matter, because I’m not the attorney general. ... There is the attorney general, and he pointed to me, and I was just to his left.
Remember: "It's very important that the American people understand this. After 9/11 the gloves came off."
Those gloves have since gone missing ... Ms. Gustitus said: “He [the Attorney General nominee] said he didn’t know if waterboarding is torture.” Mr. Giuliani said: “Well, I’m not sure it is either. I’m not sure it is either. It depends on how it’s done. It depends on the circumstances. It depends on who does it.
Confessions Not Always Clad in Iron | 
