The methods vary, from gentler tactics, occasionally referred to as "torture lite," like sleep deprivation, to hard torture, like the administration of electric shocks.
McLaughlin and Decker are ambitious about reform, along the same lines that Healy was, although they hope to accomplish more by using gentler tactics.
But "people will learn certain principles," he said, "like why to start with gentler tactics first and move to more aggressive ones only after you have popular support".
Since Mr Suharto's fall, in 1998, his successors have adopted gentler tactics, at least until now.Although the military campaign continues, the authorities in Jakarta have granted the province a special autonomous status, conceded a greater share of revenues from its extensive oil and gas fields, and begun peace talks with GAM.
So he thought it wise to try a gentler, more Zen tactic: he started writing haikus.
He is a decade or so older than most of the Young British Artists, who took the art world by storm in the early 1990s, and his sensibility is markedly different: he greatly prefers gentle seduction to shock tactics.
But he didn't care for illustrating his own books, and his second title, "Bedtime for Frances," a gentle tale about the delaying tactics of a child being sent off to bed, was illustrated by Garth Williams, with Frances as a furry little badger.
To all appearances, Huckabee's gentle rhetoric is a reflection of temperament, not a stylistic tactic.
The heavy-handed tactic you describe should be introduced only if gentler methods fail.
That tactic, among others, would not be allowed in this kinder, gentler N.F.L.
Dinara Yunus is unsure what tactics would help get her mother released, but she is convinced that gentle suasion will not.
