Elizabeth Tsurkov (the Russian-Israeli academic who was kidnapped in Iraq by a pro-Iranian militia, who was released a few months ago) has written an article in the Atlantic titled “ I was Kidnapped by Idiots” which is a fascinating read if you can get access to it. My favorite part is when she was being initially held the men holding her were apparently ordered not to torture her (this was eventually changed, and Tsurkov spends a lot of time explaining how very good they were at torture when they were so incompetent at every else). Anyways, apparently they tried to improvise with other interrogation techniques Tsurkov assumes they got from movies they had watched. Her main interrogator tries to do the whole “blowing smoke in your face” thing, except he was using a vape, so what Tsurkov got blown in her face was in fact just strawberry flavored vapor. It….did not have the intended effect
