Repost from an earlier date:
Cheney was key in clearing CIA interrogation tactics
From the LA Times
The vice president says that the use of waterboarding was appropriate and that the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, should stay open until 'the end of the war on terror.'
By Greg Miller
December 16, 2008
Reporting from Washington -- Vice President Dick Cheney said Monday that he was directly involved in approving severe interrogation methods used by the CIA, and that the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, should remain open indefinitely.
Cheney's remarks on Guantanamo appear to put him at odds with President Bush, who has expressed a desire to close the prison, although the decision is expected to be left to the incoming administration of President-elect Barack Obama.
Cheney's comments also mark the first time that he has acknowledged playing a central role in clearing the CIA's use of an array of controversial interrogation tactics, including a simulated drowning method known as waterboarding.
"I was aware of the program, certainly, and involved in helping get the process cleared," Cheney said in an interview with ABC News.
Asked whether he still believes it was appropriate to use the waterboarding method on terrorism suspects, Cheney said: "I do."
His comments come on the heels of disclosures by a Senate committee showing that high-level officials in the Bush administration were intimately involved in reviewing and approving interrogation methods that have since been explicitly outlawed and that have been condemned internationally as torture.
Soon after the Sept. 11 attacks, Cheney said, the CIA "in effect came in and wanted to know what they could and couldn't do. And they talked to me, as well as others, to explain what they wanted to do. And I supported it."
Waterboarding involves strapping a prisoner to a tilted surface, covering his face with a towel and dousing it to simulate the sensation of drowning.
CIA Director Michael V. Hayden has said that the agency used the technique on three Al Qaeda suspects in 2002 and 2003. But the practice was discontinued when lawyers from the Department of Justice and other agencies began backing away from their opinions endorsing its legality.
Cheney has long defended the technique. But he has not previously disclosed his role in pushing to give the CIA such authority.
Cheney's office is regarded as the most hawkish presence in the Bush administration, pushing the White House toward aggressive stances on the invasion of Iraq and the wiretapping of U.S. citizens.
Asked when the Guantanamo Bay prison would be shut down, Cheney said, "I think that that would come with the end of the war on terror." He went on to say that "nobody can specify" when that might occur, and likened the use of the detention facility to the imprisonment of Germans during World War II.
"We've always exercised the right to capture the enemy and hold them till the end of the conflict," Cheney said.
The administration's legal case for holding detainees indefinitely has been eroded by a series of court rulings. Obama has pledged to close the facility, which still holds 250 prisoners.
Cheney's remarks are the latest in a series of interviews granted by Bush and senior officials defending their decisions as they prepare to leave office. Bush recently said his main regret was that U.S. spy agencies had been so mistaken about Iraq's alleged weapons programs. Cheney and the Bush administration have been accused of "cherry-picking" intelligence to support going to war with Iraq.
Cheney said that those mistakes didn't matter, and that the U.S. invasion was justified by Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's ability to reestablish destructive weapons programs. The vice president brushed off a series of findings questioning that view, including a 2006 Senate report concluding that Hussein lacked a "coherent effort" to develop nuclear weapons and had only a "limited capability" for chemical weapons.
"This was a bad actor and the country's better off, the world's better off, with Saddam gone, and I think we made the right decision in spite of the fact that the original [intelligence] was off in some of its major judgments," he said.
Showing posts with label Guantanamo. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Guantanamo. Show all posts
Sunday, April 26, 2009
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
Cheney is ready to talk... now is the time to for the subpoena
According to a story on Politico this morning Darth is ready to talk and spill his guts about everything. So I think now would be the right time for a subpoena for him. Since Rove has decided to talk, maybe we can just start a revolving door.
Hey Rep. Conyers, want to issue one for Darth next??
See, he says he is ready to chat...he is willing and even eager..how about it.. get it on the record now. Then we can move forward with prosecution, strike while the iron is hot...all that..
He pulls no punches.. he makes no apologies, he is an unrepentant terrorist. He is threatening us with future attacks even. Come on.. we have to get this guy.
So these people have developed magic powers while they were in Guantanamo, and are able to do things no one ever in the history have been able to do before. And all the ones that are already in the prisons here in the US, what about them, are they going to rise up soon and take over and murder us in our sleep soon?? Should we be worried about that or is that just supposed to be forgotten??
You know it just amazes me that these people throw this garbage out there, yet they never think about that. We have several of the terrorists already in prisons here in the states.
I just hope someone, either our new AG or Rep. Conyers will take advantage of this and go after this slimy jerk. Not only does he sit in judgement of the President and his policies which we support, but he is stating that the policies that he and shrub did, which were illegal, immoral and just wrong for us all were in his opinion right and kept us safe. Oh, yes, the famous, WE KEPT YOU SAFE lie... Do we need to revisit that one???
Hey Rep. Conyers, want to issue one for Darth next??
His comments made unmistakable that Cheney—likely more than former President Bush, who has not yet given post-White House interviews—-is willing and even eager to spar with the new administration and its supporters over the issues he cares most about.
See, he says he is ready to chat...he is willing and even eager..how about it.. get it on the record now. Then we can move forward with prosecution, strike while the iron is hot...all that..
“If it hadn’t been for what we did—with respect to the terrorist surveillance program, or enhanced interrogation techniques for high-value detainees, the Patriot Act, and so forth—then we would have been attacked again,” he said. “Those policies we put in place, in my opinion, were absolutely crucial to getting us through the last seven-plus years without a major-casualty attack on the U.S.”
He pulls no punches.. he makes no apologies, he is an unrepentant terrorist. He is threatening us with future attacks even. Come on.. we have to get this guy.
Of one alternative—moving prisoners to the U.S. prisons—Cheney said he has heard from few members of Congress eager for Guantanamo transfers to their home-state prisons, and asked: “Is that really a good idea to take hardened al Qaeda terrorists who’ve already killed thousands of Americans and put ’em in San Quentin or some other prison facility where they can spread their venom even more widely than it already is?”
So these people have developed magic powers while they were in Guantanamo, and are able to do things no one ever in the history have been able to do before. And all the ones that are already in the prisons here in the US, what about them, are they going to rise up soon and take over and murder us in our sleep soon?? Should we be worried about that or is that just supposed to be forgotten??
You know it just amazes me that these people throw this garbage out there, yet they never think about that. We have several of the terrorists already in prisons here in the states.
I just hope someone, either our new AG or Rep. Conyers will take advantage of this and go after this slimy jerk. Not only does he sit in judgement of the President and his policies which we support, but he is stating that the policies that he and shrub did, which were illegal, immoral and just wrong for us all were in his opinion right and kept us safe. Oh, yes, the famous, WE KEPT YOU SAFE lie... Do we need to revisit that one???
Sunday, January 25, 2009
United Nations Backs President Obama
President Obama has some pretty good support in getting Guantanamo closed. Not only does he have 16 former military officers behind him. Here is the statement from Human Rights First and a list of their names. He also has the support of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay.
The statement from them reads as follows:
The High Commissioner also welcomed the fact that President Obama’s Executive Order issued on Thursday sets a framework for regularizing the situation of the remaining detainees in Guantanamo.
This is just another example of the rightness of his moves this week. The UN of Geneva has also offered their assistance in helping to sort out the prisoners who are in Guantanamo, and stand ready to lend their full support in resolving the legal and practical issues in getting the base closed.
This could go a long way to getting something done in finding places for the prisoners after all the sorting is done. Manfred Nowark, Special Rapporteur of Torture for the UN has spoken out several times against the US and in particular the Bush Administration for the treatment of the prisoners in the past and has applauded Pres. Obama for his actions this week and has vowed to help in any way he can.
There is quite a history between the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, and Mr. Nowark and the United States. Since early 2002, a number of special procedures mandate holders have been engaged in a dialogue with the United States Government regarding the situation of detainees held in Guantanamo Bay. In June 2004, several groups within the UN joined together to put pressure on Bush & Co. to allow them to visit with the prisoners and to visit Guantanamo. They were denied.
Accordingly, on 25 June 2004, we sent a letter requesting to visit “those persons arrested, detained or tried on grounds of alleged terrorism or other violations, in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Guantanamo Bay military base and elsewhere”. Subsequent reminders focusing on a visit to Guantanamo Bay were sent on 22 November 2004, 21 April 2005 and 31 May 2005 respectively.
By letters dated 9 November 2004 and 20 May 2005 and in a briefing with the US delegation to the Commission on Human Rights, held on 4 April 2005 in Geneva, the United States of America responded by saying that the request “continued to be the subject of intense review and consideration” and that it “has received serious attention and is being discussed at the highest levels of the U.S. Government”.
Finally, achieving no satisfaction they went public on June 23, 2005. It took until October to get some kind of answer from Bush & Co. However, the UN had the answers they needed. They had already spoken to prisoners who had been released who had been held with no charges ever being filed, people who should never have been picked up in the first place, young men and boys who were snatched off the streets for no reason other than they were in the wrong place.
On 26 and 28 October 2005, we had further meetings in New York City with US officials from the Defense and State Departments. At the second meeting, we were provided with the three letters of invitation and assurances that the US Government will continue its cooperation with the five independent experts involved in the joint study.
Even though they were promised a visit it was not without conditions and was only in certain areas. It was controlled, confined and they were only allowed to speak to the prisoners with the guards standing over them. They had requested to be allowed to speak to them without guards so they might find out what treatment they were receiving.
The experts – the Chairman Rapporteur of the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, Leila Zerrougui; the Special Rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers, Leandro Despouy; the Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, Manfred Nowak; the Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief, Asma Jahangir; and the Special Rapporteur on the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health, Paul Hunt – have repeatedly requested, without success, that the Government of the United States allow them to interview Guantanamo detainees in private, according to the terms of reference applicable to all special procedures for their country visits.
After the visit to the base by these UN officials there had been an incident, which was released as a suicide. Three of the detainees (as they are called) managed to kill themselves while under guard, with the meager belongings they are given. Makes ones mind wonder. Here is a partial statement they released:
On Countdown the other night, Keith Olbermann wondered in a segment he presented about one of the released detainees if by keeping these people in Guantanamo as Bush & Co. have if they are creating terrorists.
It does make you think. We (the royal we, as a Country) have been snatching some of these people off the streets, off the hillsides, out of their homes or just anywhere they happen to be, with no proof of any crimes or proof of any wrong doing at all in some cases and locking them up for years at a time. There is no trial, no hearing, nothing sometimes except pain, torture, psychological torture if no other by separating them from family, from everything they know and love, and locking them in a small cell open to the weather, allowing them only the bare essentials to live, and expecting them to like it.
All the while we are told, it is a wonderful place. It is clean, they have more than some of them have in their own country. Well, gee, let me put you there then. Take you away from your family, from everything you hold dear, even if it is more than you have, and see if you like it. I have heard this standard line from so many..about how wonderful Guantanamo is, but it is not their home.. what part of that do they not get.
The statement from them reads as follows:
United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay has welcomed Thursday's decision by the new United States administration to close the detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, as well as the decision to ban methods of interrogation that contravene international law. Ms. Pillay also called for a review of the United States approach to detaining individuals abroad, in countries such as Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as the practice of ‘rendition,’ in order to ensure conformity with international law.
“I warmly welcome this decision,” Ms. Pillay said on 22 January. “The fact that President Obama has placed such a high priority on closing Guantanamo and set in motion a system to safeguard the fundamental rights of the detainees there is extremely encouraging. The United States has in the past been a staunch supporter of international human rights law, and this is one of the reasons that the regime that was established in Guantanamo has been viewed as so damaging.”
“Water-boarding and other forms of interrogation that may amount to torture, detention for prolonged periods without trial or proper judicial review, and what became known as ‘extraordinary rendition’ – these are all aberrations that should never have happened,” Ms. Pillay added.
The High Commissioner also welcomed the fact that President Obama’s Executive Order issued on Thursday sets a framework for regularizing the situation of the remaining detainees in Guantanamo.
“Those suspected of crimes are entitled to an expeditious and fair trial before the regular courts,” Ms. Pillay said. “Those who are considered innocent are entitled to their freedom without delay.”
The High Commissioner also raised the issue of compensation for those judged to be innocent. “It is hard to imagine what a devastating psychological effect their years in Guantanamo will have had on them and their families. For those who were innocent, or arbitrarily detained, there should be adequate recompense for the six or seven years of their lives that have been lost.”
Ms. Pillay called for a thorough investigation into allegations of torture at the Guantanamo centre. “Under international law, there is an absolute prohibition against torture, and other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment,” she said. “There is no let-out clause. There must be accountability for those who have ordered such practices or carried them out, and victims should receive recompense.”
She also raised concerns about detention in locations outside the United States such as Afghanistan and Iraq. “There have been many disturbing questions about the legality of overseas centres such as the Bagram base in Afghanistan,” Ms. Pillay said. “These too need to be resolved quickly and satisfactorily, in order to re-establish full respect for human rights across the board. That said, I would like to salute President Obama for the extremely important step he has taken, and for doing it so swiftly upon taking up office. This is a good day for the rule of law.”
This is just another example of the rightness of his moves this week. The UN of Geneva has also offered their assistance in helping to sort out the prisoners who are in Guantanamo, and stand ready to lend their full support in resolving the legal and practical issues in getting the base closed.
This could go a long way to getting something done in finding places for the prisoners after all the sorting is done. Manfred Nowark, Special Rapporteur of Torture for the UN has spoken out several times against the US and in particular the Bush Administration for the treatment of the prisoners in the past and has applauded Pres. Obama for his actions this week and has vowed to help in any way he can.
There is quite a history between the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, and Mr. Nowark and the United States. Since early 2002, a number of special procedures mandate holders have been engaged in a dialogue with the United States Government regarding the situation of detainees held in Guantanamo Bay. In June 2004, several groups within the UN joined together to put pressure on Bush & Co. to allow them to visit with the prisoners and to visit Guantanamo. They were denied.
Accordingly, on 25 June 2004, we sent a letter requesting to visit “those persons arrested, detained or tried on grounds of alleged terrorism or other violations, in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Guantanamo Bay military base and elsewhere”. Subsequent reminders focusing on a visit to Guantanamo Bay were sent on 22 November 2004, 21 April 2005 and 31 May 2005 respectively.
By letters dated 9 November 2004 and 20 May 2005 and in a briefing with the US delegation to the Commission on Human Rights, held on 4 April 2005 in Geneva, the United States of America responded by saying that the request “continued to be the subject of intense review and consideration” and that it “has received serious attention and is being discussed at the highest levels of the U.S. Government”.
Finally, achieving no satisfaction they went public on June 23, 2005. It took until October to get some kind of answer from Bush & Co. However, the UN had the answers they needed. They had already spoken to prisoners who had been released who had been held with no charges ever being filed, people who should never have been picked up in the first place, young men and boys who were snatched off the streets for no reason other than they were in the wrong place.
On 26 and 28 October 2005, we had further meetings in New York City with US officials from the Defense and State Departments. At the second meeting, we were provided with the three letters of invitation and assurances that the US Government will continue its cooperation with the five independent experts involved in the joint study.
Even though they were promised a visit it was not without conditions and was only in certain areas. It was controlled, confined and they were only allowed to speak to the prisoners with the guards standing over them. They had requested to be allowed to speak to them without guards so they might find out what treatment they were receiving.
The experts – the Chairman Rapporteur of the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, Leila Zerrougui; the Special Rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers, Leandro Despouy; the Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, Manfred Nowak; the Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief, Asma Jahangir; and the Special Rapporteur on the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health, Paul Hunt – have repeatedly requested, without success, that the Government of the United States allow them to interview Guantanamo detainees in private, according to the terms of reference applicable to all special procedures for their country visits.
After the visit to the base by these UN officials there had been an incident, which was released as a suicide. Three of the detainees (as they are called) managed to kill themselves while under guard, with the meager belongings they are given. Makes ones mind wonder. Here is a partial statement they released:
“The simultaneous suicide of three detainees in the Guantanamo military base on 10 June 2006 was to a certain extent foreseeable in light of the harsh and prolonged conditions of their detention, and reinforces the need for the urgent closure of the detention center”,the five human rights experts of the United Nations in charge of following the situation of Guantánamo detainees said today.
On Countdown the other night, Keith Olbermann wondered in a segment he presented about one of the released detainees if by keeping these people in Guantanamo as Bush & Co. have if they are creating terrorists.
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
It does make you think. We (the royal we, as a Country) have been snatching some of these people off the streets, off the hillsides, out of their homes or just anywhere they happen to be, with no proof of any crimes or proof of any wrong doing at all in some cases and locking them up for years at a time. There is no trial, no hearing, nothing sometimes except pain, torture, psychological torture if no other by separating them from family, from everything they know and love, and locking them in a small cell open to the weather, allowing them only the bare essentials to live, and expecting them to like it.
All the while we are told, it is a wonderful place. It is clean, they have more than some of them have in their own country. Well, gee, let me put you there then. Take you away from your family, from everything you hold dear, even if it is more than you have, and see if you like it. I have heard this standard line from so many..about how wonderful Guantanamo is, but it is not their home.. what part of that do they not get.
Friday, January 23, 2009
There's a New Sheriff In Town!!!!
I keep hearing and reading two things regarding Pres. Obama closing Guantanamo Prison Camp. Number 1, that we need somewhere off the mainland of the US that we can keep these really terrible people so we can use the "enhanced" interrogation techniques so we can get all the information we need from them and can stop any future attacks. To which I call, bull... we don't need torture to make these guys talk. Besides torture doesn't always work, and the information you get is not reliable.
Then you get the ones who say well what about the smoking gun type scenario. I say, watch this video. Because this guy can explain it much better than I ever can. I have posted on him before. This is his appearance from December on Keith Olbermann. But you can tell Matthew Alexander, (not his real name) knows his stuff. My other posts can be accessed by looking back in the list to the left. He has written a book about it and has written an Op-Ed in the Washington Post. So, watch this and see what you think. Then we will talk about the Number 2 reason.
There is also this part of it..where there is parts of the media now saying that there is an opening for the CIA to still use harsh techniques...well I say no there isn't and not so fast. Here is David Shuster from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue with his take on it and his guest to talk about it.
Now, Number 2 reason mostly the right is giving for NOT closing Guantanamo is there is no where to put the people who are there, because you can't just let them go. If you just let them go they are just going to come back and fight and kill you all over again. Well again I say Bull...but lets look at it with an expert in these things. I sure am no expert...This also looks at the issue of torture again. This mans name is Professor Mark Denbeaux, of Seton Hall Law School Center for Policy and Research, and he is representing 2 of the prisoners at Guantanamo. But he has done his research about the prisoners.
To just simply say to release them would be to allow them to return to the "battlefield" and allow them to start killing all over again is to assume they were killing in the first place. So many of these people were innocent and should never have been picked up. Some of these people were children when they were grabbed off the streets, off the pastures tending sheep, out of their homes and some just disappeared from where ever they were found.
Their families have no idea if they are dead or alive.
This is just one story of many.
That alone should be a crime. How can anyone hold a child in conditions like they describe in Guantanamo.
After everything we have heard so far from the wiretaps, torture, to the other things that just keep being exposed, now the Pentagon comes out and says they don't agree with this, well I say sorry, you have NO credibility with me. You are really part of the problem here. Your side lost, that is why you are being replaced with new people, so sit down, shut up and let the big boys take over.
There's a new sheriff in town...and he is cleaning house.
Then you get the ones who say well what about the smoking gun type scenario. I say, watch this video. Because this guy can explain it much better than I ever can. I have posted on him before. This is his appearance from December on Keith Olbermann. But you can tell Matthew Alexander, (not his real name) knows his stuff. My other posts can be accessed by looking back in the list to the left. He has written a book about it and has written an Op-Ed in the Washington Post. So, watch this and see what you think. Then we will talk about the Number 2 reason.
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
There is also this part of it..where there is parts of the media now saying that there is an opening for the CIA to still use harsh techniques...well I say no there isn't and not so fast. Here is David Shuster from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue with his take on it and his guest to talk about it.
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
Now, Number 2 reason mostly the right is giving for NOT closing Guantanamo is there is no where to put the people who are there, because you can't just let them go. If you just let them go they are just going to come back and fight and kill you all over again. Well again I say Bull...but lets look at it with an expert in these things. I sure am no expert...This also looks at the issue of torture again. This mans name is Professor Mark Denbeaux, of Seton Hall Law School Center for Policy and Research, and he is representing 2 of the prisoners at Guantanamo. But he has done his research about the prisoners.
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
To just simply say to release them would be to allow them to return to the "battlefield" and allow them to start killing all over again is to assume they were killing in the first place. So many of these people were innocent and should never have been picked up. Some of these people were children when they were grabbed off the streets, off the pastures tending sheep, out of their homes and some just disappeared from where ever they were found.
Their families have no idea if they are dead or alive.
Their story may be the strangest one you'll hear out of Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Even after being cleared of any wrongdoing, five innocent men were kept captive at the detention center at Guantanamo. Today, these men who started out in China and ended up in Cuba are now free and in the Eastern European country of Albania, the only country that would take them. They spoke to the ABC News Law & Justice Unit in their first American interview.
'In The Wrong Place at the Wrong Time'
Many of Guantanamo's prisoners proclaim they're innocent. What's different about these men, Muslims from China's Uighur minority, is that even American authorities said they were innocent, referring to them as "no longer enemy combatants" or "NLEC." Nevertheless, they remained imprisoned more than a year after their names were cleared -- after the U.S. government determined they did nothing wrong and posed no terrorist threat to America or Americans.
Why were they kept at Guantanamo so long after they were deemed innocent? Simply put, no country -- including the United States -- would accept them. They couldn't go back to China because they believed, as did the American government, that as Uighur Muslims they faced persecution by the Chinese government. With nowhere else to turn, they were taken in by Albania, a country with a Muslim majority.
Even as they struggle to find a place to call home, they are working to move past the ordeal of incarceration.
"We were isolated from the rest of the world," said Abu Bakkir Qassim, speaking through a translator.
Speaking for the group, he told ABC News: "We spent a pointless four-and-a-half years in Guantanamo."
In December 2005, a U.S. federal judge said of the men's detainment, "This indefinite imprisonment at Guantanamo Bay is unlawful."
Michael Sternell, a lawyer who represents three of the men on behalf of law firm Kramer, Levin, Naftalis and Frankel told ABC News, "These men have suffered more than anyone should ever have to in a lifetime in just the last four-and-a-half years. They were detained simply because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time."
This is just one story of many.
The prisoners come from more than 40 countries, and include more than 50 Pakistanis, about 150 Saudis and three teenagers under 16, a majority of them captured in Afghanistan,
That alone should be a crime. How can anyone hold a child in conditions like they describe in Guantanamo.
After everything we have heard so far from the wiretaps, torture, to the other things that just keep being exposed, now the Pentagon comes out and says they don't agree with this, well I say sorry, you have NO credibility with me. You are really part of the problem here. Your side lost, that is why you are being replaced with new people, so sit down, shut up and let the big boys take over.
There's a new sheriff in town...and he is cleaning house.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Promise # 2 Kept
UPDATE HE IS NOT ONLY CLOSING GITMO, HE IS CLOSING ALL CIA SECRET PRISONS AROUND THE WORLD.
Promise # 2 Kept.... GitMo will be closed within a year....AP says in a breaking news alert this evening.
This was something Pres. Obama had stated he would do and there was a lot of naysayers recently thinking he was now backing out on his promise. Here is what Glenn Greenwald had to say on Jan. 11, 2009 in his blog on Salon.com about Pres. Obama signing an Executive Order to close GitMo right away.
He never stated he would close the doors in the first 100 days...he just stated he would close it. Well the order will be signed tomorrow. That's his 2nd full day in office. Not too shabby if you ask me. But I don't guess Mr. Greenwald would ask anyone like me. He is too important I am sure.
Some of these people just like to complain. Even after this has been done, there are still people complaining about this. Instead of celebrating that he is keeping his promise to close this mistake from the Bush error, they are now complaining it is going to take too long and it should be done in no more than a week.
I just say...Well done Mr. President, Well Done...
AWESOME
AGAIN I SAY WELL DONE MR PRESIDENT, WELL DONE
Promise # 2 Kept.... GitMo will be closed within a year....AP says in a breaking news alert this evening.
"In view of the significant concerns raised by these detentions, both within the United States and internationally, prompt and appropriate disposition of the individuals currently detained at Guantanamo and closure of the facility would further the national security and foreign policy interests of the United States and the interests of justice," the draft order said.
This was something Pres. Obama had stated he would do and there was a lot of naysayers recently thinking he was now backing out on his promise. Here is what Glenn Greenwald had to say on Jan. 11, 2009 in his blog on Salon.com about Pres. Obama signing an Executive Order to close GitMo right away.
I've been saying since the election that it makes little sense to try to guess what Obama is going to do until he actually does it. That's especially true now, since we'll all have the actual evidence very shortly, and trying to speculate by divining the predictive meaning of his appointments or prior statements seems fruitless. Moreover, anonymous reports about what Obama is "likely" to do are particularly unreliable. I still believe that, but Obama's interview today with George Stephanopoulos provides the most compelling -- and most alarming -- evidence yet that all of the "centrist" and "post-partisan" chatter from Obama's supporters will mean what it typically means: devotion, first and foremost, to perpetuating rather than challenging how the Washington establishment functions.
As Talk Left's Jeralyn Merritt documents, Obama today rather clearly stated that he will not close Guantanamo in the first 100 days of his presidency.
He never stated he would close the doors in the first 100 days...he just stated he would close it. Well the order will be signed tomorrow. That's his 2nd full day in office. Not too shabby if you ask me. But I don't guess Mr. Greenwald would ask anyone like me. He is too important I am sure.
Some of these people just like to complain. Even after this has been done, there are still people complaining about this. Instead of celebrating that he is keeping his promise to close this mistake from the Bush error, they are now complaining it is going to take too long and it should be done in no more than a week.
I just say...Well done Mr. President, Well Done...
Saturday, December 20, 2008
6 Questions for Matthew Alexander...author of How to Break a Terrorist
On Dec. 1, 2008 I posted this:
Here is more from Matthew Alexander, and please remember this is not his real name. He has had to hide his identity. This is cross posted from Harper's Magazine and was written by Scott Horton. He interviewed Matthew and asked him these 6 questions.
“The American Public has a Right to Know That They Do Not Have to Choose Between Torture and Terror”: Six questions for Matthew Alexander, author of How to Break a Terrorist
At 5:15 p.m. on June 7, 2006, two American F-16 fighters dropped 500-pound bombs on a farmhouse about five miles north of the Iraqi town of Baqubah. Within an hour, the death of Abu Musab al Zarqawi, a Jordanian street thug who had risen to become the head of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, was confirmed. This resulted from one of the most important intelligence breakthroughs of the Iraq War. Matthew Alexander is the pseudonym for an American Air Force major who, through a series of skillful interrogations, secured the information that allowed the military to pinpoint al Zarqawi’s whereabouts and kill him. His book How to Break a Terrorist is a compelling account of the American military’s turn from highly coercive interrogation techniques, which proved consistently unproductive, to confidence-building approaches honed over decades in the American law-enforcement community, which achieved steady success.
Major Matthew Alexander 1. In the last weeks of the Bush Administration, they’re waging a campaign to convince the public that President-elect Obama’s plans to close Guantánamo, ban torture, and stop extraordinary renditions will make America less safe. Here’s how one of the administration’s apologists recently put things in an op-ed in the New York Times: “if we’d gotten our hands on a senior member of Al Qaeda before 9/11, and knew that an attack likely to kill thousands of Americans was imminent, wouldn’t waterboarding, or taking advantage of the skills of our Jordanian friends, have been the sensible, moral thing to do with a holy warrior who didn’t fear death but might have feared pain?” You actually did have “holy warriors” in your custody who were plotting to kill American soldiers and innocent civilians, and got the results that enabled U.S. fighter bombers to take out Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the head of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia. What do you think of these claims?
In Iraq, we lived the “ticking time bomb” scenario every day. Numerous Al Qaeda members that we captured and interrogated were directly involved in coordinating suicide bombing attacks. I remember one distinct case of a Sunni imam who was caught just after having blessed suicide bombers to go on a mission. Had we gotten there just an hour earlier, we could have saved lives. Still, we knew that if we resorted to torture the short term gains would be outweighed by the long term losses. I listened time and time again to foreign fighters, and Sunni Iraqis, state that the number one reason they had decided to pick up arms and join Al Qaeda was the abuses at Abu Ghraib and the authorized torture and abuse at Guantánamo Bay. My team of interrogators knew that we would become Al Qaeda’s best recruiters if we resorted to torture. Torture is counterproductive to keeping America safe and it doesn’t matter if we do it or if we pass it off to another government. The result is the same. And morally, I believe, there is an even stronger argument. Torture is simply incompatible with American principles. George Washington and Abraham Lincoln both forbade their troops from torturing prisoners of war. They realized, as the recent bipartisan Senate report echoes, that this is about who we are. We cannot become our enemy in trying to defeat him.
2. One of the most controversial tactics that the Bush Administration adopted in the war on terror involves abusing a prisoner’s religious feelings to degrade or humiliate. Enforced nudity, the use of military dogs, sexually suggestive conduct, and forms of ritual defilement have all been documented as authorized techniques in Iraq and at Guantánamo, even though these techniques are probably illegal. Do you believe that an interrogator can make headway by trashing his subject’s religion or by using religion to degrade? Did you make use of religion in a different way?
First, there’s no doubt in my mind that these tactics are illegal. Geneva Conventions Common Article 3 specifically bans “humiliating and degrading treatment.” Trashing or degrading a detainee’s religion does not help convince a detainee to cooperate. It does just the opposite, reinforcing the reasons why the detainee decided to pick up arms against us.
During training, we were told that religion was a taboo subject because of the types of illegal activities that had occurred at Guantánamo Bay. I disagreed and I often discussed religion with my detainees. I frequently brought my own copy of the Quran into the interrogation booth and asked religious questions, always treating Islam with respect. I’ve read the Quran even though I’m not Muslim. I found my detainees, even high level imams, to be very open to my inquiries. In this way I showed them that I respected their religion and their beliefs and it changed their attitudes towards me and helped me to win their trust. One of our great strengths as Americans is our religious tolerance, a founding principle of our country, and we should use that strength in the interrogation booth to help build rapport with detainees and foster cooperation. As I told my team in Iraq, the things that make you a good American are the same things that will make you a good interrogator.
3. In your book you detail “new approaches” which seem very familiar to me—they are techniques that the FBI has used in interrogation for several decades, focusing on confidence-building. Is that correct? Why did it take so long for tested and proven approaches from the law enforcement world to be used in a military intelligence operation?
You are correct that relationship- (or confidence-) building approaches are not new and have been known to law enforcement for decades. Even World War II interrogators used relationship-building approaches to great success, but we can build on that. Interrogation is an art and a science and, like every discipline, can be improved upon. My group began to integrate relationship-building with other criminal investigative techniques, always tailoring it to the culture at hand. This is what made our techniques new. I watched day in and day out as my group of interrogators used American ingenuity in adapting these approaches for each individual detainee and they were highly effective. Interrogation is about being smarter, not harsher.
Why these techniques have not yet been integrated into intelligence interrogation is a mystery to me. I made a list of criminal investigation techniques that would be effective in interrogations and included it in my “after-action” report. The next administration needs to institutionalize this approach by contracting a cadre of experienced law enforcement officers to help train our intelligence interrogators. This same relationship already exists between civilian and military criminal investigators.
4. You describe members of your team saying that Al Qaeda members did not care about their families, that they were committed ideologues. This was taken as a justification for the use of coercion (usually fear) as the key tool for interrogation. But most counterterrorism experts agree that recruits to radical Islamist groups may be brought in by many factors other than ideology—clan-based affiliations, family, a motive of revenge–even a desire to make some money. It would obviously be vital for an interrogator to get a fix on motivation in forming an approach to getting a prisoner to talk. Does that suggest that American interrogators are being hindered by a politically shaped and unnecessarily crude understanding of the adversary?
Yes. We do ourselves a great disservice by stereotyping our enemies. Al Qaeda is comprised of a variety of individuals each with their own unique motivations for having joined. I can only remember one true ideologue in all the interrogations I conducted or supervised (more than 1,300) and even he started to come around at the end because we treated him with respect. The overwhelming majority of Sunni Iraqis who joined Al Qaeda did so out of need, not want. For some the reason was economic, for others tribal obligations, and for a large number it was for protection from the Shiite militias–the militias that we allowed, after the removal of Saddam, to conduct reprisal killings. When my group of interrogators reached out to these Sunnis and offered them an alternative to fighting against us –fighting with us–they were easily convinced to cooperate and rejected Al Qaeda. Sometimes all it took was an apology from an American for the mistakes we made at the beginning of the war. General David Petraeus proved this point by facilitating the Anbar Awakening. Interrogations are best conducted in the spirit of cooperation and negotiation, not domination and retribution. This is a metaphor for how we should use all of our instruments of power in fighting this war.
5. You note that the Bush Administration insisted on 93 redactions from the text and you had to take them to court, winning only after the book had gone to press. Most of the redactions do not appear to be motivated by legitimate concerns about security; they seem instead to be an effort to derail publication of your book. What do you think this was about? How does your publisher plan to make the redacted texts available to the public?
I believe this was an attempt at censorship and, perhaps, retaliation. On appeal I won 80 of the 93 redactions, so only 13 remain in the book. The Department of Defense redacted an extraordinary amount of unclassified material, including the entire scene where I convinced the man who led us to Zarqawi to cooperate after only six hours of interrogation using a relationship-building approach. The old methods of interrogation had failed for twenty days to convince this man to cooperate. The American public has a right to know that they do not have to choose between torture and terror. There is a better way to conduct interrogations that works more efficiently, keeps Americans safe, and doesn’t sacrifice our integrity. Our greatest victory to date in this war, the death of Abu Musab Al Zarqawi (which saved thousands of lives and helped pave the way to the Sunni Awakening), was achieved using interrogation methods that had nothing to do with torture. The American people deserve to know that. In future printings or the paperback version of How to Break a Terrorist we will include the material that we have won on appeal. I am still appealing several remaining redactions of obvious unclassified material.
6. You write that the Bush Administration’s torture policy is responsible for the death of more Americans than perished on 9/11. Explain what you mean by this.
The number-one reason foreign fighters gave for coming to Iraq to fight is the torture and abuse that occurred at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo. The majority of suicide bombings are carried out by foreign fighters who volunteered and came to Iraq with this motivation. Consequently it is clear that at least hundreds but more likely thousands of American lives (not to count Iraqi civilian deaths) are linked directly to the policy decision to introduce the torture and abuse of prisoners as accepted tactics. Americans have died from terrorist attacks since 9/11; those Americans just happen to be American soldiers. This is not simply my view–it is widely held among senior officers in the U.S. military today. Alberto Mora, who served as General Counsel of the Navy under Donald Rumsfeld, testified to the Senate Armed Services Committee in June 2008 that “U.S. flag-rank officers maintain that the first and second identifiable causes of U.S. combat deaths in Iraq–as judged by their effectiveness in recruiting insurgent fighters into combat–are, respectively the symbols of Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo.” We owe it to our troops to protect them from terrorist attacks by not conducting torture and we owe it to our forefathers to uphold the American principles that they passed down to us.
In addition to this I want to add another quote that Scott Horton had. He also talked to someone else and asked about a story that has been tossed around the last few days by the Bush administration. Here is the results of that question. I am not going to say anything...just add what he said in the magazine.
I'm Still Tortured by What I Saw in Iraq
By Matthew Alexander
Sunday, November 30, 2008;
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.
Here is more from Matthew Alexander, and please remember this is not his real name. He has had to hide his identity. This is cross posted from Harper's Magazine and was written by Scott Horton. He interviewed Matthew and asked him these 6 questions.
“The American Public has a Right to Know That They Do Not Have to Choose Between Torture and Terror”: Six questions for Matthew Alexander, author of How to Break a Terrorist
At 5:15 p.m. on June 7, 2006, two American F-16 fighters dropped 500-pound bombs on a farmhouse about five miles north of the Iraqi town of Baqubah. Within an hour, the death of Abu Musab al Zarqawi, a Jordanian street thug who had risen to become the head of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, was confirmed. This resulted from one of the most important intelligence breakthroughs of the Iraq War. Matthew Alexander is the pseudonym for an American Air Force major who, through a series of skillful interrogations, secured the information that allowed the military to pinpoint al Zarqawi’s whereabouts and kill him. His book How to Break a Terrorist is a compelling account of the American military’s turn from highly coercive interrogation techniques, which proved consistently unproductive, to confidence-building approaches honed over decades in the American law-enforcement community, which achieved steady success.
Major Matthew Alexander 1. In the last weeks of the Bush Administration, they’re waging a campaign to convince the public that President-elect Obama’s plans to close Guantánamo, ban torture, and stop extraordinary renditions will make America less safe. Here’s how one of the administration’s apologists recently put things in an op-ed in the New York Times: “if we’d gotten our hands on a senior member of Al Qaeda before 9/11, and knew that an attack likely to kill thousands of Americans was imminent, wouldn’t waterboarding, or taking advantage of the skills of our Jordanian friends, have been the sensible, moral thing to do with a holy warrior who didn’t fear death but might have feared pain?” You actually did have “holy warriors” in your custody who were plotting to kill American soldiers and innocent civilians, and got the results that enabled U.S. fighter bombers to take out Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the head of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia. What do you think of these claims?
In Iraq, we lived the “ticking time bomb” scenario every day. Numerous Al Qaeda members that we captured and interrogated were directly involved in coordinating suicide bombing attacks. I remember one distinct case of a Sunni imam who was caught just after having blessed suicide bombers to go on a mission. Had we gotten there just an hour earlier, we could have saved lives. Still, we knew that if we resorted to torture the short term gains would be outweighed by the long term losses. I listened time and time again to foreign fighters, and Sunni Iraqis, state that the number one reason they had decided to pick up arms and join Al Qaeda was the abuses at Abu Ghraib and the authorized torture and abuse at Guantánamo Bay. My team of interrogators knew that we would become Al Qaeda’s best recruiters if we resorted to torture. Torture is counterproductive to keeping America safe and it doesn’t matter if we do it or if we pass it off to another government. The result is the same. And morally, I believe, there is an even stronger argument. Torture is simply incompatible with American principles. George Washington and Abraham Lincoln both forbade their troops from torturing prisoners of war. They realized, as the recent bipartisan Senate report echoes, that this is about who we are. We cannot become our enemy in trying to defeat him.
2. One of the most controversial tactics that the Bush Administration adopted in the war on terror involves abusing a prisoner’s religious feelings to degrade or humiliate. Enforced nudity, the use of military dogs, sexually suggestive conduct, and forms of ritual defilement have all been documented as authorized techniques in Iraq and at Guantánamo, even though these techniques are probably illegal. Do you believe that an interrogator can make headway by trashing his subject’s religion or by using religion to degrade? Did you make use of religion in a different way?
First, there’s no doubt in my mind that these tactics are illegal. Geneva Conventions Common Article 3 specifically bans “humiliating and degrading treatment.” Trashing or degrading a detainee’s religion does not help convince a detainee to cooperate. It does just the opposite, reinforcing the reasons why the detainee decided to pick up arms against us.
During training, we were told that religion was a taboo subject because of the types of illegal activities that had occurred at Guantánamo Bay. I disagreed and I often discussed religion with my detainees. I frequently brought my own copy of the Quran into the interrogation booth and asked religious questions, always treating Islam with respect. I’ve read the Quran even though I’m not Muslim. I found my detainees, even high level imams, to be very open to my inquiries. In this way I showed them that I respected their religion and their beliefs and it changed their attitudes towards me and helped me to win their trust. One of our great strengths as Americans is our religious tolerance, a founding principle of our country, and we should use that strength in the interrogation booth to help build rapport with detainees and foster cooperation. As I told my team in Iraq, the things that make you a good American are the same things that will make you a good interrogator.
3. In your book you detail “new approaches” which seem very familiar to me—they are techniques that the FBI has used in interrogation for several decades, focusing on confidence-building. Is that correct? Why did it take so long for tested and proven approaches from the law enforcement world to be used in a military intelligence operation?
You are correct that relationship- (or confidence-) building approaches are not new and have been known to law enforcement for decades. Even World War II interrogators used relationship-building approaches to great success, but we can build on that. Interrogation is an art and a science and, like every discipline, can be improved upon. My group began to integrate relationship-building with other criminal investigative techniques, always tailoring it to the culture at hand. This is what made our techniques new. I watched day in and day out as my group of interrogators used American ingenuity in adapting these approaches for each individual detainee and they were highly effective. Interrogation is about being smarter, not harsher.
Why these techniques have not yet been integrated into intelligence interrogation is a mystery to me. I made a list of criminal investigation techniques that would be effective in interrogations and included it in my “after-action” report. The next administration needs to institutionalize this approach by contracting a cadre of experienced law enforcement officers to help train our intelligence interrogators. This same relationship already exists between civilian and military criminal investigators.
4. You describe members of your team saying that Al Qaeda members did not care about their families, that they were committed ideologues. This was taken as a justification for the use of coercion (usually fear) as the key tool for interrogation. But most counterterrorism experts agree that recruits to radical Islamist groups may be brought in by many factors other than ideology—clan-based affiliations, family, a motive of revenge–even a desire to make some money. It would obviously be vital for an interrogator to get a fix on motivation in forming an approach to getting a prisoner to talk. Does that suggest that American interrogators are being hindered by a politically shaped and unnecessarily crude understanding of the adversary?
Yes. We do ourselves a great disservice by stereotyping our enemies. Al Qaeda is comprised of a variety of individuals each with their own unique motivations for having joined. I can only remember one true ideologue in all the interrogations I conducted or supervised (more than 1,300) and even he started to come around at the end because we treated him with respect. The overwhelming majority of Sunni Iraqis who joined Al Qaeda did so out of need, not want. For some the reason was economic, for others tribal obligations, and for a large number it was for protection from the Shiite militias–the militias that we allowed, after the removal of Saddam, to conduct reprisal killings. When my group of interrogators reached out to these Sunnis and offered them an alternative to fighting against us –fighting with us–they were easily convinced to cooperate and rejected Al Qaeda. Sometimes all it took was an apology from an American for the mistakes we made at the beginning of the war. General David Petraeus proved this point by facilitating the Anbar Awakening. Interrogations are best conducted in the spirit of cooperation and negotiation, not domination and retribution. This is a metaphor for how we should use all of our instruments of power in fighting this war.
5. You note that the Bush Administration insisted on 93 redactions from the text and you had to take them to court, winning only after the book had gone to press. Most of the redactions do not appear to be motivated by legitimate concerns about security; they seem instead to be an effort to derail publication of your book. What do you think this was about? How does your publisher plan to make the redacted texts available to the public?
I believe this was an attempt at censorship and, perhaps, retaliation. On appeal I won 80 of the 93 redactions, so only 13 remain in the book. The Department of Defense redacted an extraordinary amount of unclassified material, including the entire scene where I convinced the man who led us to Zarqawi to cooperate after only six hours of interrogation using a relationship-building approach. The old methods of interrogation had failed for twenty days to convince this man to cooperate. The American public has a right to know that they do not have to choose between torture and terror. There is a better way to conduct interrogations that works more efficiently, keeps Americans safe, and doesn’t sacrifice our integrity. Our greatest victory to date in this war, the death of Abu Musab Al Zarqawi (which saved thousands of lives and helped pave the way to the Sunni Awakening), was achieved using interrogation methods that had nothing to do with torture. The American people deserve to know that. In future printings or the paperback version of How to Break a Terrorist we will include the material that we have won on appeal. I am still appealing several remaining redactions of obvious unclassified material.
6. You write that the Bush Administration’s torture policy is responsible for the death of more Americans than perished on 9/11. Explain what you mean by this.
The number-one reason foreign fighters gave for coming to Iraq to fight is the torture and abuse that occurred at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo. The majority of suicide bombings are carried out by foreign fighters who volunteered and came to Iraq with this motivation. Consequently it is clear that at least hundreds but more likely thousands of American lives (not to count Iraqi civilian deaths) are linked directly to the policy decision to introduce the torture and abuse of prisoners as accepted tactics. Americans have died from terrorist attacks since 9/11; those Americans just happen to be American soldiers. This is not simply my view–it is widely held among senior officers in the U.S. military today. Alberto Mora, who served as General Counsel of the Navy under Donald Rumsfeld, testified to the Senate Armed Services Committee in June 2008 that “U.S. flag-rank officers maintain that the first and second identifiable causes of U.S. combat deaths in Iraq–as judged by their effectiveness in recruiting insurgent fighters into combat–are, respectively the symbols of Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo.” We owe it to our troops to protect them from terrorist attacks by not conducting torture and we owe it to our forefathers to uphold the American principles that they passed down to us.
“My friend,” I say. “Let me ask you this. What can I do for you?”
“Sir?”
“You’re helping me so I want to know how can I help you?”
“I have one favor to ask.”
“Of course. What can I do for you?” He seems embarrassed.
“I do not like showering naked in front of the guards.”
I nod and tell him, “I wouldn’t like that either.” That relaxes him a little.
“Would it be possible for me to wear boxer shorts in the shower?” He could have asked for a lot more than that.
“That won’t be a problem. I will let the guards know.”
—A passage the Bush Administration attempted to censor from How to Break a Terrorist: The U.S. Interrogators Who Used Brains, Not Brutality, to Take Down the Deadliest Man in Iraq
Reprinted by permission of the publisher, Free Press. Copyright (c) 2008 Matthew Alexander
I see the world in terms of tolerance. Ignorance versus knowledge. Fear versus understanding. These two videos [of beheadings] are displays of hatred so fierce that it drives men to depravity. It is the hatred that I hate…
Pure hate. Pure malice. Torture and cruelty are their tools. To fight them, should I resort to hate? To bitterness and jaded contempt? Is that what it means to be a veteran ‘gator around here?
—From How to Break a Terrorist by Matthew Alexander
In addition to this I want to add another quote that Scott Horton had. He also talked to someone else and asked about a story that has been tossed around the last few days by the Bush administration. Here is the results of that question. I am not going to say anything...just add what he said in the magazine.
FBI Director Calls Cheney on Torture Lies
By Scott Horton
The Bush Administration’s swan song consists of a series of increasingly absurd claims designed to cover its crimes and failings. The most persistent of these is the claim that torture was necessary to save lives, and that attacks were in fact averted through the use of torture techniques. Vice President Cheney continued his crusade for torture yesterday insisting that torture is the “moral” thing to do (helping to explain the origins of Cheney’s Washington nickname, “vice”). Vanity Fair’s David Rose takes a look at the administration’s case for torture, and specifically its claims that torture averted attacks or at least produced actionable intelligence of some sort. He walks us through all the claims, one by one, and finds that they are all contradicted by the facts. Some of the sources did produce useful intelligence, but in no case was the application of torture the reason why, nor did it even contribute to the result. In the final lines of his article, he has this exchange with FBI director Robert Mueller:
I ask Mueller: So far as he is aware, have any attacks on America been
disrupted thanks to intelligence obtained through what the administration still calls “enhanced techniques”?
“I’m really reluctant to answer that,” Mueller says. He pauses, looks at an aide, and then says quietly, declining to elaborate: “I don’t believe that has been the case.”
Mueller is “reluctant to answer” because he knows that Cheney and other administration spokespersons have repeatedly made that claim. And he knows that it is a lie which has been advanced for a specific reason: to cloak their criminal conduct.
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
Description of Waterboarding...graphic
I am going to post something that a lot of people are not going to like to read. It is something they may deny, it is something they want to pretend didn't happen. It is something I wish never happened, but it did. Our President and Vice-President ordered it, condoned it, and made sure it was done at several different levels in different places around the world. It was done in Guantanamo Bay, it was done in Abu Ghraib, it was done in many others we don't know of.
I can't imagine the pain, the horror of it, how it must feel to the person going through it. But this is a description of what is known as "Water Boarding". This is what VP Cheney admitted to saying he approved and pushed to have done by the CIA and our military. This is what Donald Rumsfeld said was OK to do to prisoners. This is what has been done on behalf of the USA to try to get information. It has been shown this doesn't work. That any information garnered is suspect at best, because you will do or say anything to make this stop. Think about it. What would you do if this was happening to you?
What are your thoughts now?? How do you feel?? Can you imagine what they are going through? Can you feel the pain? This is just one of the forms of torture that was used. There were others. What do you think of this?? I really would like to know.
I can't imagine the pain, the horror of it, how it must feel to the person going through it. But this is a description of what is known as "Water Boarding". This is what VP Cheney admitted to saying he approved and pushed to have done by the CIA and our military. This is what Donald Rumsfeld said was OK to do to prisoners. This is what has been done on behalf of the USA to try to get information. It has been shown this doesn't work. That any information garnered is suspect at best, because you will do or say anything to make this stop. Think about it. What would you do if this was happening to you?
Your feet are shackled, and so are your wrists. When you were lead into the room you saw that it did not have the usual table, this room had a board, and a drain in the floor. You are blindfolded by the guards and roughly forced to lie on the wet wooden board. Even though you are shackled they tie you down to the board with three ropes, one across your chest, one across your waist and one across your legs. You are now completely unable to move, your head is below the level of your feet making the blood rush to your head.
You can hear them moving around and hear a hose running, filling a bucket of water. Your heart begins to race as your mouth is forced open and a wet rag is stuffed inside. There is enough clothe that it fills your mouth, and prevents your teeth from meeting, even at the back of your mouth. You feel a person sitting next you on the board, and they put their hands on your stomach, just above your diaphragm and push down, keeping you from taking a deep breath through your nose. You sense someone else standing above your head, and then the water starts to pour over your face. Not a little, but a torrent of water, it is running up your nose, and you can not breath! Your gag reflex kicks in, but the rag in your mouth does not let you gag.
Your body begins to convulse, convinced in the most primitive of reflexes to try to do anything to get more air! You thrash but the ropes and shackles have you completely immobilized. You feel the water hitting your face, as the person on the bench presses down on your diaphragm, forcing what little air you have out, not in. You are now sure that you are going to die, that you are going to drown, not an abstract, but for real, and right now. Your chest burns with the need for more air, your eyes tear under the blindfold as you struggle to get one more breath.
You are no longer a rational human, you are now just a survival machine, ready to beg anyone, do anything to make the pain stop and get just one more breath. The water stops falling on you. You suck air in through your nose and try to suck it in through you mouth. Both bring more water along with the small amount of air you can get. You hear the hose running again and know that this is not over, it is just starting. Your heart is going like a trip hammer, and you are in a state of terror, like nothing you have ever experienced or thought of. You know if and when they ask you something, you will do or say anything, anything to prevent them from doing it again. Then the hands push on your stomach, and the water starts falling again.
You struggle, trying to hold your breath, but the gag reflex kicks in again, and again you become more animal than man as you struggle for breath your body wracked with pain and convulsively struggling to get free to breath.
What are your thoughts now?? How do you feel?? Can you imagine what they are going through? Can you feel the pain? This is just one of the forms of torture that was used. There were others. What do you think of this?? I really would like to know.
Monday, December 15, 2008
Can this happen here??? We can hope this will be the 1st of many.
Charges filed against Rumsfeld & others for torture of Iraqi's
AMMAN, Dec 15, 2008 (AFP) - A Jordan-based Iraqi rights group said on Monday it has filed 200 lawsuits against US former defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld and American security firms for their alleged role in torturing Iraqis.
Ali Qeisi, head of the group the "Society of Victims of the US Occupation in Iraq," said the cases, relating to torture and abuse of Iraqi prisoners, have been recently filed in federal courts in Virginia, Michigan and Maryland.
"Around 30 lawsuits have been accepted so far," Qeisi told AFP. The others are still under consideration.
"The torture was systemic, and those responsible for it should be punished and the victims should be compensated," he said.
Qeisi said he himself was tortured by US troops in Iraq during a six-month detention, though he refused to elaborate.
Last year, French, US and German rights groups filed suits for torture against Rumsfeld, who was accused by a US bipartisan Senate report last Thursday of being to blame for abuse of detainees in US custody.
"Rumsfeld's authorisation of aggressive interrogation techniques for use at Guantanamo Bay was a direct cause of detainee abuse there" and "influenced and contributed to the use of abusive techniques... in Afghanistan and Iraq," the report concluded.
In a high-profile case involving private security guards, five Blackwater guards were last week charged with killing 14 unarmed Iraqi civilians and wounding 18 others with gunfire and grenades in September 2007.
A sixth guard has pleaded guilty to charges of voluntary manslaughter and attempt to commit manslaughter.
AMMAN, Dec 15, 2008 (AFP) - A Jordan-based Iraqi rights group said on Monday it has filed 200 lawsuits against US former defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld and American security firms for their alleged role in torturing Iraqis.
Ali Qeisi, head of the group the "Society of Victims of the US Occupation in Iraq," said the cases, relating to torture and abuse of Iraqi prisoners, have been recently filed in federal courts in Virginia, Michigan and Maryland.
"Around 30 lawsuits have been accepted so far," Qeisi told AFP. The others are still under consideration.
"The torture was systemic, and those responsible for it should be punished and the victims should be compensated," he said.
Qeisi said he himself was tortured by US troops in Iraq during a six-month detention, though he refused to elaborate.
Last year, French, US and German rights groups filed suits for torture against Rumsfeld, who was accused by a US bipartisan Senate report last Thursday of being to blame for abuse of detainees in US custody.
"Rumsfeld's authorisation of aggressive interrogation techniques for use at Guantanamo Bay was a direct cause of detainee abuse there" and "influenced and contributed to the use of abusive techniques... in Afghanistan and Iraq," the report concluded.
In a high-profile case involving private security guards, five Blackwater guards were last week charged with killing 14 unarmed Iraqi civilians and wounding 18 others with gunfire and grenades in September 2007.
A sixth guard has pleaded guilty to charges of voluntary manslaughter and attempt to commit manslaughter.
Thursday, December 4, 2008
President Elect Obama plans to end questionable policy
PE Obama plans to end the policy of torture that has been going on during the tenure of Pres. Bush. The CIA and some military have been accused of using means of torture to question enemy combatants. PE Obama has been meeting with retired military officiers who are advising him on this and on closing Guantanamo.
These are things he spoke of during the campaign and he plans on keeping his word on these things. Here is a You Tube of some of those officers talking about how they feel about the policies we as a nation have been following.
Excerpt taken from Human Rights First web site.
On July 20, 2005 President Bush issued an executive order governing CIA interrogation techniques that keeps the door open to torture and other cruel and inhuman treatment of detainees in American custody. The order does not clearly and specifically end illegal practices: so-called "enhanced interrogation techniques," which have included water boarding, stress positions, hypothermia, sensory deprivation, sleep deprivation and isolation, and holding prisoners in secret CIA "black sites" in order to keep them outside the reach of the law. The U.S. military is now following a transparent Army Field Manual that prohibits many of the abusive interrogation techniques previously authorized by the administration but, to put an end to abuse, a single standard of conduct for all U.S. interrogations – including interrogations by the CIA and private contractors – regardless of location or who is being interrogated is necessary.
Interrogation Practices and Policies
Relying on information provided by current and former CIA officials and supervisors, in November 2005 ABC News reporters Brian Ross and Richard Esposito provided descriptions of several techniques used in CIA interrogations:
Water Boarding: The prisoner is bound to an inclined board, cellophane is wrapped over his face and water is poured over him. causing the prisoner to experience a terrifying fear of drowning.
The Cold Cell: The prisoner is left to stand naked in a cell kept near 50 degrees and is repeatedly doused with cold water.
Long Time Standing: The prisoner is forced to stand, handcuffed and with their feet shackled to an eye bolt in the floor for more than 40 hours, causing both extreme pain and sleep deprivation.
Attention Slap: An open-handed strike aimed at causing pain and triggering fear.
The Belly Slap: A hard open-handed strike to the stomach. The aim is to cause pain, but not internal injury. Doctors consulted advised against using a punch, which could cause lasting internal damage.
Secret Detentions: Over the last several years, the United States has operated a program in which it has held detainees in secret CIA facilities around the world, without acknowledging, even to the detainees’ families, that it has these individuals in custody. The United States has also held prisoners “off the books” in known detention facilities. These practices violate U.S. and international law.
The U.S. Secret Detention Program in Brief:
According to a number of reports, including an in-depth report by Human Rights First, the CIA has operated secret detention facilities in a number of places including Afghanistan, Pakistan, Jordan, Morocco, Diego Garcia, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Kosovo, and Macedonia.
On September 6, 2006, the President publicly acknowledged the existence of the CIA secret detention program, although he has not released the locations of particular facilities to the public or to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). It appears the program is currently operational, with at least one detainee having been held in the program before being transported to Guantanamo in April 2007.
There are dozens of individuals who are believed to have been detained in CIA secret facilities whose current whereabouts are unknown.
The United States has also held detainees in known detention facilities (such as Abu Ghraib) while keeping their names off the official prison rolls and failing to report their presence in those facilities to the ICRC. These prisoners have been called “ghost detainees.”
At least one “ghost detainee,” Manadel al Jamadi, was killed in November 2003 while in U.S. custody in Iraq.
Private Contractors
It is now widely recognized that an accountability crisis has arisen with respect to private military contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan. While contractors are supposedly working under the laws of armed conflict, there are no consistent training requirements for contractors on the laws of war, there is no oversight checking their conduct against these standards, and essentially no realistic criminal justice accountability when criminal violations occur. A number of bills have been introduced in Congress aimed at addressing these problems. Some initial hearings have been held; more are anticipated. Here are some of the facts on private military contractors:
DOD currently acknowledges roughly 30,000 U.S. security contractors operating in Iraq, including substantial numbers of ex-patriots from the U.K., South Africa, the Philippines, Uganda, Zimbabwe, Fiji, Chile, and Honduras.
In concept, these forces are deployed solely for personnel and facility protection, but in one of his final acts as Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld issued a determination including U.S. security contractors as an integral part of the "total combat force" deployed in Iraq.
Private contractors were involved in some of the most serious abuses at Abu Ghraib, as reported in the Fay-Jones Report. Similarly, they have been tied to a large number of cases involving assaults on detainees, and homicides and assaults on the ground in Iraq. Only one single case has been prosecuted – involving a CIA contractor in Afghanistan. Over a dozen cases coming out of Abu Ghraib were investigated by the US Army Crime Records Center (CID) and referred to the Department of Justice with a recommendation for prosecution. No action has been taken on these cases even though investigations were completed roughly two years ago.
These are things we can't let slide any longer. As has been pointed out, this makes our country look bad to others. It also makes us a target, even bigger than we were before. It will not be easy to retrain the ones responsible for this, and that is what will have to happen. They will all have to be retrained or released. Most of them are only following orders. Granted there are some that might have followed those orders a little too willingly, but still they were following orders.
So, not only does PE Obama have his plate full with the economy like it is, now he has to worry with cleaning up this mess and closing Guantanamo. Not an easy task, but I have faith he is up to the task.
Good luck PE Obama, I have a feeling you will need it.
These are things he spoke of during the campaign and he plans on keeping his word on these things. Here is a You Tube of some of those officers talking about how they feel about the policies we as a nation have been following.
Excerpt taken from Human Rights First web site.
On July 20, 2005 President Bush issued an executive order governing CIA interrogation techniques that keeps the door open to torture and other cruel and inhuman treatment of detainees in American custody. The order does not clearly and specifically end illegal practices: so-called "enhanced interrogation techniques," which have included water boarding, stress positions, hypothermia, sensory deprivation, sleep deprivation and isolation, and holding prisoners in secret CIA "black sites" in order to keep them outside the reach of the law. The U.S. military is now following a transparent Army Field Manual that prohibits many of the abusive interrogation techniques previously authorized by the administration but, to put an end to abuse, a single standard of conduct for all U.S. interrogations – including interrogations by the CIA and private contractors – regardless of location or who is being interrogated is necessary.
Interrogation Practices and Policies
Relying on information provided by current and former CIA officials and supervisors, in November 2005 ABC News reporters Brian Ross and Richard Esposito provided descriptions of several techniques used in CIA interrogations:
Water Boarding: The prisoner is bound to an inclined board, cellophane is wrapped over his face and water is poured over him. causing the prisoner to experience a terrifying fear of drowning.
The Cold Cell: The prisoner is left to stand naked in a cell kept near 50 degrees and is repeatedly doused with cold water.
Long Time Standing: The prisoner is forced to stand, handcuffed and with their feet shackled to an eye bolt in the floor for more than 40 hours, causing both extreme pain and sleep deprivation.
Attention Slap: An open-handed strike aimed at causing pain and triggering fear.
The Belly Slap: A hard open-handed strike to the stomach. The aim is to cause pain, but not internal injury. Doctors consulted advised against using a punch, which could cause lasting internal damage.
Secret Detentions: Over the last several years, the United States has operated a program in which it has held detainees in secret CIA facilities around the world, without acknowledging, even to the detainees’ families, that it has these individuals in custody. The United States has also held prisoners “off the books” in known detention facilities. These practices violate U.S. and international law.
The U.S. Secret Detention Program in Brief:
According to a number of reports, including an in-depth report by Human Rights First, the CIA has operated secret detention facilities in a number of places including Afghanistan, Pakistan, Jordan, Morocco, Diego Garcia, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Kosovo, and Macedonia.
On September 6, 2006, the President publicly acknowledged the existence of the CIA secret detention program, although he has not released the locations of particular facilities to the public or to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). It appears the program is currently operational, with at least one detainee having been held in the program before being transported to Guantanamo in April 2007.
There are dozens of individuals who are believed to have been detained in CIA secret facilities whose current whereabouts are unknown.
The United States has also held detainees in known detention facilities (such as Abu Ghraib) while keeping their names off the official prison rolls and failing to report their presence in those facilities to the ICRC. These prisoners have been called “ghost detainees.”
At least one “ghost detainee,” Manadel al Jamadi, was killed in November 2003 while in U.S. custody in Iraq.
Private Contractors
It is now widely recognized that an accountability crisis has arisen with respect to private military contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan. While contractors are supposedly working under the laws of armed conflict, there are no consistent training requirements for contractors on the laws of war, there is no oversight checking their conduct against these standards, and essentially no realistic criminal justice accountability when criminal violations occur. A number of bills have been introduced in Congress aimed at addressing these problems. Some initial hearings have been held; more are anticipated. Here are some of the facts on private military contractors:
DOD currently acknowledges roughly 30,000 U.S. security contractors operating in Iraq, including substantial numbers of ex-patriots from the U.K., South Africa, the Philippines, Uganda, Zimbabwe, Fiji, Chile, and Honduras.
In concept, these forces are deployed solely for personnel and facility protection, but in one of his final acts as Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld issued a determination including U.S. security contractors as an integral part of the "total combat force" deployed in Iraq.
Private contractors were involved in some of the most serious abuses at Abu Ghraib, as reported in the Fay-Jones Report. Similarly, they have been tied to a large number of cases involving assaults on detainees, and homicides and assaults on the ground in Iraq. Only one single case has been prosecuted – involving a CIA contractor in Afghanistan. Over a dozen cases coming out of Abu Ghraib were investigated by the US Army Crime Records Center (CID) and referred to the Department of Justice with a recommendation for prosecution. No action has been taken on these cases even though investigations were completed roughly two years ago.
These are things we can't let slide any longer. As has been pointed out, this makes our country look bad to others. It also makes us a target, even bigger than we were before. It will not be easy to retrain the ones responsible for this, and that is what will have to happen. They will all have to be retrained or released. Most of them are only following orders. Granted there are some that might have followed those orders a little too willingly, but still they were following orders.
So, not only does PE Obama have his plate full with the economy like it is, now he has to worry with cleaning up this mess and closing Guantanamo. Not an easy task, but I have faith he is up to the task.
Good luck PE Obama, I have a feeling you will need it.
Monday, December 1, 2008
Copy of a Washington Post OpEd from today
This is an OpEd from today that helped me decide what to write about. It is another version of a story about torture. This is from someone who stood his ground, and refused to do what others did. He is to be commended for it. Yet he has to now write under an assumed name and hide himself in fear of retaliation, but the article he wrote is really interesting.
I'm Still Tortured by What I Saw in Iraq
By Matthew Alexander
Sunday, November 30, 2008; B01
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.
howtobreakaterrorist@gmail.com
Matthew Alexander led an interrogations team assigned to a Special Operations task force in Iraq in 2006. He is the author of "How to Break a Terrorist: The U.S. Interrogators Who Used Brains, Not Brutality, to Take Down the Deadliest Man in Iraq." He is writing under a pseudonym for security reasons.
I'm Still Tortured by What I Saw in Iraq
By Matthew Alexander
Sunday, November 30, 2008; B01
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.
howtobreakaterrorist@gmail.com
Matthew Alexander led an interrogations team assigned to a Special Operations task force in Iraq in 2006. He is the author of "How to Break a Terrorist: The U.S. Interrogators Who Used Brains, Not Brutality, to Take Down the Deadliest Man in Iraq." He is writing under a pseudonym for security reasons.
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