This man is a hero. He was key in tracking down and killing Abu Musab al-Zarqawi(former leader of "Al Queda in Iraq" and a very effective propagator of murder and chaos) and he did it WITHOUT abuse, torture or any means that disgrace America. He only used the methods approved of in the Army Field Manual and his own intellect. He knows what the hell he is talking about.
This is a semi-long read and its worth it. All Americans need to read this.
Quote:
I should have felt triumphant when I returned from Iraq in August 2006. Instead, I was worried and exhausted. My team of interrogators had successfully hunted down one of the most notorious mass murderers of our generation, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq and the mastermind of the campaign of suicide bombings that had helped plunge Iraq into civil war. But instead of celebrating our success, my mind was consumed with the unfinished business of our mission: fixing the deeply flawed, ineffective and un-American way the U.S. military conducts interrogations in Iraq. I'm still alarmed about that today.
I'm not some ivory-tower type; I served for 14 years in the U.S. Air Force, began my career as a Special Operations pilot flying helicopters, saw combat in Bosnia and Kosovo, became an Air Force counterintelligence agent, then volunteered to go to Iraq to work as a senior interrogator. What I saw in Iraq still rattles me -- both because it betrays our traditions and because it just doesn't work.
Violence was at its peak during my five-month tour in Iraq. In February 2006, the month before I arrived, Zarqawi's forces (members of Iraq's Sunni minority) blew up the golden-domed Askariya mosque in Samarra, a shrine revered by Iraq's majority Shiites, and unleashed a wave of sectarian bloodshed. Reprisal killings became a daily occurrence, and suicide bombings were as common as car accidents. It felt as if the whole country was being blown to bits.
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.
Over the course of this renaissance in interrogation tactics, our attitudes changed. We no longer saw our prisoners as the stereotypical al-Qaeda evildoers we had been repeatedly briefed to expect; we saw them as Sunni Iraqis, often family men protecting themselves from Shiite militias and trying to ensure that their fellow Sunnis would still have some access to wealth and power in the new Iraq. Most surprisingly, they turned out to despise al-Qaeda in Iraq as much as they despised us, but Zarqawi and his thugs were willing to provide them with arms and money. I pointed this out to Gen. George Casey, the former top U.S. commander in Iraq, when he visited my prison in the summer of 2006. He did not respond.
Perhaps he should have. It turns out that my team was right to think that many disgruntled Sunnis could be peeled away from Zarqawi. A year later, Gen. David Petraeus helped boost the so-called Anbar Awakening, in which tens of thousands of Sunnis turned against al-Qaeda in Iraq and signed up with U.S. forces, cutting violence in the country dramatically.
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 Zarqawi's death wasn't enough to convince the joint Special Operations task force for which I worked to change its attitude toward interrogations. The old methods continued. I came home from Iraq feeling as if my mission was far from accomplished. Soon after my return, the public learned that another part of our government, the CIA, had repeatedly used waterboarding to try to get information out of detainees.
I know the counter-argument well -- that we need the rough stuff for the truly hard cases, such as battle-hardened core leaders of al-Qaeda, not just run-of-the-mill Iraqi insurgents. But that's not always true: We turned several hard cases, including some foreign fighters, by using our new techniques. A few of them never abandoned the jihadist cause but still gave up critical information. One actually told me, "I thought you would torture me, and when you didn't, I decided that everything I was told about Americans was wrong. That's why I decided to cooperate."
Torture and abuse are against my moral fabric. The cliche still bears repeating: Such outrages are inconsistent with American principles. And then there's the pragmatic side: Torture and abuse cost American lives.
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.
After my return from Iraq, I began to write about my experiences because I felt obliged, as a military officer, not only to point out the broken wheel but to try to fix it. When I submitted the manuscript of my book about my Iraq experiences to the Defense Department for a standard review to ensure that it did not contain classified information, I got a nasty shock. Pentagon officials delayed the review past the first printing date and then redacted an extraordinary amount of unclassified material -- including passages copied verbatim from the Army's unclassified Field Manual on interrogations and material vibrantly displayed on the Army's own Web site. I sued, first to get the review completed and later to appeal the redactions. Apparently, some members of the military command are not only unconvinced by the arguments against torture; they don't even want the public to hear them.
My experiences have landed me in the middle of another war -- one even more important than the Iraq conflict. The war after the war is a fight about who we are as Americans. Murderers like Zarqawi can kill us, but they can't force us to change who we are. We can only do that to ourselves. One day, when my grandkids sit on my knee and ask me about the war, I'll say to them, "Which one?"
Americans, including officers like myself, must fight to protect our values not only from al-Qaeda but also from those within our own country who would erode them. Other interrogators are also speaking out, including some former members of the military, the FBI and the CIA who met last summer to condemn torture and have spoken before Congress -- at considerable personal risk.
We're told that our only options are to persist in carrying out torture or to face another terrorist attack. But there truly is a better way to carry out interrogations -- and a way to get out of this false choice between torture and terror.
I'm actually quite optimistic these days, in no small measure because President-elect Barack Obama has promised to outlaw the practice of torture throughout our government. But until we renounce the sorts of abuses that have stained our national honor, al-Qaeda will be winning. Zarqawi is dead, but he has still forced us to show the world that we do not adhere to the principles we say we cherish. We're better than that. We're smarter, too.
Yes, American CAN win the war on terror, and win it WITH HONOR. I and many others have said for a long time(since 9/11 in fact) that if they hate us for who we are, and we change who we are to fight them, they win by default.
Naturally the common people don't want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in
America, nor in Germany. That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the
country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along,
whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist
dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the
leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and
denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the
same in any country. - Hermann Goring
Thats one of the first higher ranking people I heard that actually made sence.
Thers good information there...
Im so appalled by all the hate and stupidity in the world that Im actually ashamed to be a human being.
That reminds me of something I've learnd.
The best and quickest way to defeat your enemy... is to make them your friend.
Very good read, sadly though I feel it will fall on deaf ears.
KevinP (Stabby McShankyou) wrote:
and I'm NOT a pedo. everyone knows i've got a wheelchair fetish.
Torture has never been very effective for obtaining information simply because a person in intense pain will say anything to get his torturer to stop. There's also the danger that a person in such a state may get utterly confused and start to babble, so the info would be worthless. Usually the best way is to threaten torture, not apply it.
Like, for example, a needle held less than an inch from a man's eyeball will convince him to talk a lot more than plunging the needle into the eye. Because if you actually go through with it he'll be blinded and in horrible pain and he'll be too busy going into shock to tell you anything. He probably couldn't remember his own damn name, much less the location of key leaders or a weapon's cache.
Torture is mostly used in third world countries because people enjoy hurting their enemies. The information gathering is secondary.
Lastly, the problem with torture is that the ONLY way to make torture work is to show compassion at the end. It's how you break the person. You hurt them really intensely for an hour or two, enough to make them regress into childhood and cry for their mother; then you hold them in your arms, wipe their tears away and whisper gently that only they can stop their pain by telling you what they know.
Imagine the person needed to do such a thing. Could you do it? I couldn't. I'm cold, but not THAT cold. To properly torture requires a degree of sadism and cruelty that I sincerely hope is absent from the American character.
That whole "Ticking Clock" scenario that the Bush administration tried to feed the American people is bull. Real life isn't 24. Such a situation rarely happens, and if it did then the "Threaten rather than implement" method I outlined above would work best. But that's a one in a million scenario.
I hate to say it, because it makes me sound like a hippy, but a soft touch works best in an interrogation.
Good read
Probably will get him a spot on the Daily Show to promote his book and that's about all who will pay attention.
Mr.Goodwrench-G.T. wrote:When Sadam was it was atleast stable, but he was not business efficient for us. Violence over there will happen, as we are there as foreigners occupying their country and forcing our way of life and business to a retrograde society, do we actually think we are going to get compliance with this scenario?
This isn't about being in Iraq, it is about Americans acting like Americans should even when it is hardest. This guy did and his honorable methods produced the best results as well.
Anyone who thinks torture... I mean "enhanced interrogation techniques..." bring about real actionable intelligence and real results in keeping Americans(INCLUDING the troops) safe - they do not know what the @!#$ they are talking about!! This guy does, and he produced the results to prove it.
He also discovered something else - that the armed Sunnis could be turned against Al Queda easily - a fact which was later exploited by General David Petraeus during the surge via the "Anabar awakening," aka the thing that produced the real results in Iraq far more than a mere "surge" of troops that occurred at basically the same time(although the "surge" was not actually the main thing behind the results, it did help however).
Naturally the common people don't want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in
America, nor in Germany. That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the
country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along,
whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist
dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the
leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and
denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the
same in any country. - Hermann Goring
Mr.Goodwrench-G.T. wrote:It is about Iraq, and if we were not there we would not be in the rut we are in now. BUT agreed on the torture philosophy. And the Sunnis issue does not surprise me one bit, Sunnis are like the gypsies so to speak, very unstable with little capital and well... unliked by majority in Iraq, so by them turning against Al Queda would not surprise me one bit, but if we were to trust them like we did the Taliban in the 80's, I have ugly feeling that history might repeat it self in being distrusted in the future, just because of their instability (IMO.)
Explain "the rut we are in now", I hope you are referring to our international popularity contest and not our economic troubles at home.
