How to Break a Terrorist
| Mon Dec. 1, 2008 8:25 AM PST
HOW TO BREAK A TERRORIST...."Matthew Alexander," an interrogator who rejected torture in favor of "showing cultural understanding and using good old-fashioned brainpower to tease out information," and managed to bag the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, in the process, writes about his experience:
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....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.
Alexander's book, How to Break a Terrorist, hits bookstores tomorrow. Sounds like a good read.
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Comments
Kevin, please do not just dismiss this comment as stupid. One reason I have no respect for a lot of liberals is that they don't listen to the other side. You tend to be different. At least you listen. I think this should at least be considered as a valid point.
This sentence could just as easily been written
I learned in Iraq that the No. 1 reason foreign fighters flocked there to fight were [ ..the widespread and sensational reports in the American press about...] the abuses carried out at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.
I admit that I have my biases. However, at its worst, what appears to me what happened at Abu Ghraib is that some people got put in charge who were not up to the task. Their is no evidence as far as I can see that the widely reported incidents at Abu Ghraib were directed by the administration, or were more than the usual atrocities which any grownup who knows about war will tell you are bound to happen.
Yet it was politically advantageous for the liberal press to paint it in such a way as to make it seem like a systemic problem. The reporting could have been, and probably would have been handled differently, had a Democratic administration been involved. It would have been completely consistent with the facts to report the story from a military discipline point of view. The lead could have been ....
"American Military internal affairs are investigating reported abuses of prisoners by low level personnel during a night of frat-party like pranks. Courts martial proceedings are sure to follow. This type of abuse, which is part of every war, is unfortunate. The great thing about the American military is that rather than ignore this, there is already an investigation into this behavior....."
In my opinion, the reason this type of reporting was not used is that, although it would have been better for America to report it this way, it would not have been useful for the Democratic party, the anti-Bush portion of the press, or the anti-war effort.
In regards to Guantanamo Bay, i have yet to see any proof that anyone ever abused the Koran. Yet this story was trumpeted loudly.
I can only conclude from this that the slanted press made an editorial decision, that it suited its purposes better to make these stories as sensational as possible. In light of what is said above, I think that individual liberally biased editors made understandable, but very careless decisions to report the stories as they did.
Respectful and factual refutations of the above are welcome and may generate a response. Ad hominem attacks and name calling will be ignored as theyt should be.
Submitted by Legacy on Mon Dec. 1, 2008 10:08 AM PST.
John: The fact that Newsweek made a mistake in one story about the Koran does not mean that torture wasn't routinely used at Guantanamo. It was, and this has been documented about as thoroughly as it could be. Ditto for our secret bases around the world. Ditto for Abu Ghraib. It's also been documented, about as thoroughly as you could hope for, that all of this started with direction from the very top of the government and dribbled its way down from there.
Read Jane Mayer's "The Dark Side" if you have any doubt of this. Or read something, at least. You just can't possibly believe that torture and abuse weren't both widespread and officially sanctioned if you make even a minimal effort to read up on the subject.
JH, another reason why the the abuses were the problem, not the reporting, is that everyone local knew about the abuses. Remember the rocket attack on Abu Ghraib? That was apparently the result of the women prisoners begging to be killed to stop the torture and disgrace.
Some specifics may have been missing (like the photos), some may have been mythical, like the abuse of the Koran, but everybody knew about it.
Except in America. We were kept in the dark. And you seem to prefer it that way.
Kevin:
Thanks for the respectful reply and I admit you are probably more informed on this issue. But, I think we have two very different items going on here.
I doubt that a serious article about which interrogation techniques work and which do not work would inflame more Muslims into joining the insurgency. Handled correctly, it is not a propaganda piece.
To my incredulity, you brush aside that "...Newsweek made a mistake in one story about the Koran..". Remember, the sad state of radical Islam today is that these people actually killed people over a cartoon. I happen to be very religious. You aren't. Religious symbols carry an enormous amount of emotional weight. It takes more than an academic discussion to rile up people to a radical state. An emotional story does much better. "American desecrated the Koran..." packs a lot more punch than "..mujahadeen was water-boarded.."
What was particularly galling about Abu Ghraib was not the sanctioned techniques. As far as I know, it was the photos of abuse that went beyond what was directed. Also it appears that there was already an investigation into this. I think "Matthew Alexander" has a much more learned view than me as to proper technique for interrogating prisoners. But I think he has too inflated of view of the propaganda value of "bad interrogation techniques". In my opinion it is the supposed desecration of the Koran, and the unsanctioned level of abuse seen in the photos from Abu Ghraib that created the propaganda that was used to recruit more insurgents. At this point the emotional pack of the story became important.
I fully understand that liberals feel like they were doing the right thing by making an international scandal from the story of Abu Ghraib and actions at Guantamo. I also admit, like others, I have a tendency to accept what confirms my own beliefs, and to be skeptical about what goes against them. However, I just don't think it was the level of roughness on interrogation that recruited more terrorists. It was emotional issues and sensationalist reporting.
Pay attention to what you said. You simply dismissed Newsweek's error as one small error. This is ludicrous!!! Making a mistake about whether or not some American official, purposely desecrated a Koran is not a "small mistake". Spreading propaganda that the Koran was being desecrated probably cost a few American lives.
John Hansen, your premise is idiotic and your whining tone (oh, please don't attack me for being a torture defending moron - it wouldn't be nice) is typical of those who support the brutalization of human beings but think that an unkind word towards themselves is beyond the pale.
There's no fucking liberal press. Well, there is, but it is composed of publications you won't find next to the New York Times - a publication that had no trouble propagandizing for the wholesale slaughter of innocent Iraqis.
The truth is that the torture was passed down from the office of the President and what we got wasn't a sensationalized view but a rather glossed-over view that pretended that the problem was a few bad apples. It was not. It was people like you. People who ignored the fact that Iraq wasn't a threat to the security of the United States. People who made the outlandish claim that the only people distressed by the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq were terrorists. People like you who don't understand that torture is wrong against those convicted of crimes - never mind those who are merely suspects.
No, the problem wasn't an overblown story, as the idiot right-wing would have it. The problem was that Iraq was terrorized by bombings and then individuals, not convicted of any criminal acts, were brutalized by order of the President.
A decent political party doesn't fear the press. The Republicans aren't decent.
Spreading propaganda that the Koran was being desecrated probably cost a few American lives.
How many lives did it cost when the media spread Bush's propaganda about Iraq? Or don't the lives of the American soldiers and Bush's Iraqi victims count?
Submitted by Charlie Stross (not verified) on Mon Dec. 1, 2008 12:31 PM PST.
John Hansen: you seem to be labouring under the illusion that this is unprecedented.
Go back to the early 1970s and read the documented history of the Northern Irish conflict, including the large-scale military occupation of Northern Ireland during Operation Motorman, and the use of internment and interrogation techniques by the British military (and what the European Court said about them). Hint: a lot of the stuff that passes for interrogation practice in the US military today was previously used by the British, found to be torture in the EC ... and more importantly, it radicalized a whole generation of Republicans.
This stuff isn't rocket science, and Iraq isn't a unique, special case. It happens every bloody time a great power has to go through the learning curve: how to occupy a hostile territory after you remove the entire upper tier of government from the levers of power. Right now the US is around the same point in the learning curve that the UK was, five years in (circa 1976). You could save yourself a lot of blood, sweat, and tears by studying other people's fuck-ups, although you might have to ditch the prenicious idea of American exceptionalism first.
