It was obvious to me that Col. West knows his Ba'athists quite well. Whenever one of them wanted to pistol whip some poor victim they'd clear their pistol first to avoid accidentally shooting themselves.
Col. West cleared his pistol. The Ba'athist terrorist took that as a prelude to losing teeth and having a funny jawline the rest of his life, and caved!
This approach has it's counterpart with a technique used by the Spanish Inquisition ~ they'd simply direct that the "instruments of torture be displayed" to their target!
The supposed "threat" existed only in the mind of the Ba'athist. It's not likely Col. West threatened to shoot the guy ~ hey, after all, he emptied his pistol!
Well, guess what?
You just defined the crime of assault, as per Article 128 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
Look up Richard Toliver's The Interrogator to see how interrogations are done. The guy profiled in the book was a German who was extremely adept at getting Allied POWs to talk and disclose all manner of extremely sensitive information. And he never threatened them in any way.