So interrogations not based on torture led to Zarqawi? I guess so:Amid the chaos, four other Air Force criminal investigators and I joined an elite team of interrogators attempting to locate Zarqawi. What I soon discovered about our methods astonished me. The Army was still conducting interrogations according to the Guantanamo Bay model: Interrogators were nominally using the methods outlined in the U.S. Army Field Manual, the interrogators' bible, but they were pushing in every way possible to bend the rules -- and often break them. I don't have to belabor the point; dozens of newspaper articles and books have been written about the misconduct that resulted. These interrogations were based on fear and control; they often resulted in torture and abuse.
I refused to participate in such practices, and a month later, I extended that prohibition to the team of interrogators I was assigned to lead. I taught the members of my unit a new methodology -- one based on building rapport with suspects, showing cultural understanding and using good old-fashioned brainpower to tease out information. I personally conducted more than 300 interrogations, and I supervised more than 1,000. The methods my team used are not classified (they're listed in the unclassified Field Manual), but the way we used them was, I like to think, unique. We got to know our enemies, we learned to negotiate with them, and we adapted criminal investigative techniques to our work (something that the Field Manual permits, under the concept of "ruses and trickery"). It worked. Our efforts started a chain of successes that ultimately led to Zarqawi.
Our new interrogation methods led to one of the war's biggest breakthroughs: We convinced one of Zarqawi's associates to give up the al-Qaeda in Iraq leader's location. On June 8, 2006, U.S. warplanes dropped two 500-pound bombs on a house where Zarqawi was meeting with other insurgent leaders.But here's the sad part. Torture makes things worse for the American troops fighting in Iraq:
I learned in Iraq that the No. 1 reason foreign fighters flocked there to fight were the abuses carried out at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Our policy of torture was directly and swiftly recruiting fighters for al-Qaeda in Iraq. The large majority of suicide bombings in Iraq are still carried out by these foreigners. They are also involved in most of the attacks on U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq. It's no exaggeration to say that at least half of our losses and casualties in that country have come at the hands of foreigners who joined the fray because of our program of detainee abuse. The number of U.S. soldiers who have died because of our torture policy will never be definitively known, but it is fair to say that it is close to the number of lives lost on Sept. 11, 2001. How anyone can say that torture keeps Americans safe is beyond me -- unless you don't count American soldiers as Americans.But the last gasp Bush Administration is saying that "We did not torture." But considering the last 8 years, why should we believe anything coming out of such a criminal enterprise?
13 comments:
John K: You left wing kooks are in trouble now. Hussein Obama is keeping Gates. And appointing Gen Jones as boss of the NSA. Fisa court and its ruling ain't going anywhere. And he ain't pulling out of Iraq as promised. Juan Williams articulated this point well on FOX News Sunday. And Gen Petreuas is staying in to run the war. Looks like you left wingers didn't win squat. LOL
John K: By the way how is the war in Iraq going these days? LMAO And how is that Gen Betrayus guy doing? Still a mouthpiece for the Bush admin? Still lying about the war? I win!
You still don’t actually read anything, do you, John K.? The article the post references praises Petraeus for his methods (by the way, you insult Petraeus by misspelling his name).
The point the article makes in one that I think has been made here consistently. That point is that the occupation of Iraq was consistently mishandled by the highest levels of the defense department. Our soldiers have performed magnificently. There are undoubtedly some cases where things have gone wrong, but as a whole the military was exceptional in taking over Iraq in the first couple of months of the war. It’s when the occupation started that things went wrong. There weren’t enough troops at first, the Provisional Authority mishandled money and the dismantling of the Iraqi army and there was the torture mentioned in the article and its role in drawing foreign fighters to Iraq. So if I say there weren’t enough troops in Iraq, then I have t acknowledge the opposite, that the Surge was a good idea, and further I will say that since the Defense Department has stepped back and let military leaders such as Petraeus conduct operations as they see fit, the occupation has turned around. We won’t be able to leave until the politicians in Iraq get there act together, and since we allowed a wave of kidnappings and murders from 2004-2006 of engineers, doctors and other professionals, the country may not recover to stability for decades. But you don’t consider issues in that level of depth, do you, John K.? It’s all “LOL” and “I win” for you. You can’t see that Obama is bringing in (or retaining) true professionals in foreign policy and finance to reassure everybody that we take our role in the world seriously. But, then, you’re not a serious guy.
John K: Get real. LMAO I do win! 14 months ago you left wingers said we lost in Iraq. Reid, Obama, and Biden said it was a failure. You ran ads about Gen Betrayus and how he lied. Now you praise him. LOL LOL LMAO I told you all along. You weren't opposed to the war in Iraq. You just hated Bush taking credit for it. He won. SOFA agreement signed. Troops pullout timetable set. Marines have left Fallujah. A battle you said we could not win. Now this blog from a loser. You left wingers endorse every loser in the military. I won! You lost! NEXT! LMAO
John K: So tell me Ed, LOL Now that Hussein Obama won when does he say we are leaving Iraq? He seems to have changed his tone since Nov 4th. Gates to remain, Petreaus to remain and Jones in charge of NSA. Hussein Obama said during the election he would pull out on Jan 20th. You left wingers believed him. LMAO I win!
John K: I can't resist. How is Rep. Murtha? Haven't heard him make any statements about Haditha. Haven't heard him make statements about pulling out of Iraq back to Okinawa. LMAO You losers.
And I repeat, you still don't read anything, do you, John K.?
What I have heard Obama say is that he was looking for a 16 month pullout from Iraq, never everybody out on January 20th ((and of course you have no source). Obama does seem to have pulled back from that more recently in that he is now saying subject to conditions on the ground, as reported to him by the military commanders on the ground.
Now, I never ran an ad in the NYTimes. If you want to lump all democrats or liberals into one group, then I will ask you why you said 9/11 was God's punishment of the United States.
By the way, you say "troops pullout timetable set". That's excellent (if true), that's all anybody in the democratic party wanted. But it should be subject to conditions on the ground.
And as I recall, I believe the soldiers from Haditha have gone through the justice system. It is quite possible justice was not served, but baring some extraordinary event (such as the Iraqi’s requesting to try the men) it appears they are done with incident. Meanwhile, if you asked me, I would probably say that Murtha spoke rashly and foolishly. But you aren’t interested in a dialogue, you are interested in being an asshole. And every time you comment you prove it again.
litle boy,
What did the military investigations of Haditha find? You don't know, do you?
They found that, while unarmed women and children were shot to death by those Marines at Haditha, the Marines' actions were within the rules of engagement.
You're too young to understand what that means:
Those peopke were slaughtered. By any reasonable peacetime measure, they were murdered.
But, under the rules that we set for our troops in that hostile area, it was ok to shoot first, and ask questions later.
When will you be old enough to volunteer?
Kimber,
Those are NOT only the rules of engagement in Iraq, they are the rules here in the good old USA. If a policeman gets into a gunfight with a bad guy and you get in the way and he shoots you, it goes against the bad guy. When I was growing up, the pigs shot it out with some bank robbers in a suburb of Cleveland, Ohio killing a thirteen-year-old. The bank robbers went to prison for life without parole, the murdering pig got a commendation. Maybe that is why I am so bitter.
Do you object to torture because of your belief that is ineffective and counterproductive or because you believe it is morally reprehensible? Would it be all right to strap a prisoner down, hook him up to a lie detector, and drug him with sodium pentathol (or something more effective) to question him? No torture involved. Should that be legal? Do you believe in right and wrong (though we may disagree on what IS right and wrong) or are you moral relativists? I don’t think you can have it both ways.
clinger,
The civilians in question were not caught in a crossfire.
There was no gunfire coming from their location.
And, while we're at it....Yes, I oppose torture because it is inneffective, and, therefore, the ends cannot possibly justify the means. There are better means than torture for interrogation. (As developed by a Marine, who had to deal with Japanese prisoners, during WWII.)
Clinger and Kimber, look, yes, I think we can all agree torture is morally reprehensible. It is also almost always ineffective. But for me, it was also horrible that the terrorists that Matthew Alexander interrogated told him that foreign fighters were flocking to Iraq because of what we did at Abu-Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay. We caused so much of our own problem, we literally killed our own soldiers by torturing Iraqis and foreign fighters, causing so many more foreign fighters to come to Iraq and kill our soldiers. Rumsfeld’s and Cheney’s and Bush’s policy killed American soldiers.
So, there are three arguments against torture, ineffective, morally reprehensible and a great recruiting tool for the other side. And John K. was trying to say I wanted it both ways, calling Petraeus Betrayus one day and praising him the next. That’s not particularly true, but it’s not the real issue anyway.
The real issue is we never had any business going to Iraq; Al Qaeda was never there, Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, Iraq had no WMD’s after the first Gulf war (and anyone who had followed the reports of the UN weapons Inspectors knew that), Iraq was stuck behind a wall of sanctions and slowly starving to death. George Bush took us to Iraq for no reason, and now he is dumping Iraq, Afghanistan and his failed economy on Barack Obama.
Ed,
I'm not saying that, if it did work, torture would be acceptable. It is not. The loss of the moral high ground has been disasterous for the US.
But, since the argument that I most often run into, even in my church, is "ends justify means," I cut straight to my usual response: It doesn't even work. So, there aren't even any "ends" that can mitigate disgraceful and immoral means.
Right, Kimber, so now you have an extra argument for your fellow parishioners. Not only does the end not justify the means because torture does not reach the desired end, but the means creates a different problem in being an effective recruiting tool for foreign fighters in Iraq (and damaging our moral standing with everybody else except maybe Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Kim Jung Il and Vladimir Putin).
Sorry, just being pushy.
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