Torture – Again
I don’t want to write about torture. Like most Americans I assumed the whole thing was settled by General George Washington’s orders regarding prisoners during the Revolutionary War, and the Eighth Amendment to the US Constitution: “Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.” These principles are part and parcel of the Geneva Conventions that the US signed. There is no “gray area”, there is no uncertainty. Torture is illegal, un-Constitutional, and un-American.
In a Wall Street Journal op-ed supposedly written by CIA Director General Michael Hayden and former Attorney General Michael Mukasey you will find this piece of ignorance: “Interrogation is conducted by using such obvious approaches as asking questions whose correct answers are already known and only when truthful information is provided proceeding to what may not be known.” That isn’t how an interrogation is conducted, that’s how a lawyer questions witnesses at a trial.
If you want to know what military and law enforcement interrogators/interviewers are striving for, watch a Bill Moyers interview. Bill Moyers is the best interrogator I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen quite a few.
I did the job in the military and law enforcement, and the differences are almost all in terminology. Law enforcement calls them interviewers, and the military calls them interrogators. The law enforcement term is a better description, although conversationalist comes closer to the most consistently successful technique. The purpose is to get the subject to hold a conversation, to talk to you. The really high value stuff usually comes as an aside, an offhand remark, not a question. Questions tell the subject what is specifically important to you, and you don’t want them to know that or they’ll avoid the topic.
A good interviewer can read body language, which will tell when they are lying, or under stress. You tape the conversations, because you might miss something that someone else will catch, and you are looking for inconsistencies.
My Mother mentioned that on a call-in show [probably on C-SPAN], a torture supporter asked “What were we supposed to do, offer them a cup of tea?” Actually, food and drink often help to establish the proper atmosphere for a good session. Sometimes you might do it for the caffeine, which means they have to ask to go to the bathroom, which is another way of controlling the situation. You don’t make them sit there, but you make them ask, which is helpful with high status people.
If you are dealing with someone of low status, it is generally good to be extremely polite, to build them up, and let them know you are interested in their opinions. With high status people, you need to establish that they are not in charge, and you have greater status than they do, but if they are interesting, you might waste some time listening to them even though it is obvious they aren’t important enough to know anything. Yes, it is often that simple, that transparent, that obvious. You need some acting skills and a pleasant voice helps. You are not there to yell or threaten, you are there to listen. In point of fact, the skill of active listening is at the heart of being a good interviewer.
It is interesting that if you look at the translation of the Gestapo’s Vershärfte Vernehmung [Enhanced Interrogation] manual that Andrew Sullivan unearthed back in May of 2007, the Hedgemony were worse than them from the beginning. The Gestapo was rather restrained by Cheney’s standards until it was obvious they were losing the war.
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I don’t want to write about torture. Like most Americans I assumed the whole thing was settled by General George Washington’s orders regarding prisoners during the Revolutionary War, and the Eighth Amendment to the US Constitution: “Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.” These principles are part and parcel of the Geneva Conventions that the US signed. There is no “gray area”, there is no uncertainty. Torture is illegal, un-Constitutional, and un-American.
I couldn’t agree more Bryan. Well said.
I used to believe, when I was young and naive, that it was unhuman too. Then I saw humans for what they are, and realised it isn’t unhuman at all.
Like you, I too was trained in interrogation. In Cambodia, it took a hell of a lot of effort to get a KR guerrilla to open up honestly. But we did, even when with most of them I felt a very strong urge to tear them to pieces slowly for the things they had done. Part of the technique was to make sure they knew with certainty just how we felt and that we just needed half an excuse then the *rules of engagement* etc would be joyfully thrown out the window! I never had to resort to barbaric or useless physical techniques. We never resorted to any of the BS *softening up* garbage you see in Hollywood movies.
As one of my team mates once said when I confided that I wanted to chop the lot of them up into tiny bits because they had totally destroyed three villages and tortured and killed over a hundred innocent men, women and children… “If we behave like them, how can anyone tell the good guys from the bad guys?” And he was right.
When you behave like the bad guys because it’s what they do, you are the bad guys. There is never a moral, ethical or legitimate reason to act as they do. I always thought we fight the *bad guys* because we are different, not because we want to be the same.
That isn’t how an interrogation is conducted, that’s how a lawyer questions witnesses at a trial.
Spot on again. These people are consummate fools and should be charged with treason if you ask me.
Yeah… I wanted to kill every SOB KR fighter I saw. But I didn’t. Because I’m not like them, and because it’s always easy to justify and rationalize anything, no matter how wrong it is. And that’s all these moronic cowards are doing. I just had to lock my feelings away and play the game. And we got a lot of valuable intel and saved thousands of innocent lives. If we had been like them, they would simply have escalated their terror campaign and many more thousands of innocents would have paid the price of our folly. And knowing that is what made me do the right thing. I can sleep easy.
All these fools you have there should all be rounded up and sent to Afghanistan to some hell hole for a year, assuming any last that long. Starting with the President.
They should try spending some time talking to child molesters, pimps, or any of the other refuse that cops deal with on a daily basis. Yes, they are less than human. Yes, you want to leave them as a damp spot on the floor. Yes, there are time when you leave the interview, throw up and take a long shower to forget what you have been “chatting” with, but you do it ensure they are never free to walk the streets again.
It would be quick and easy to just punch them in the throat and let them drown in their own blood, but you continue to plug away until you have what you need to put them away.
This isn’t a game; this is serious business. If the people with the uniforms and authority aren’t going to abide by the laws, rules, and conventions that civilized society has enacted, they are as bad as the people they oppose.
We know how to do this without breaking any rules or laws, and we have people who are damn good at it.
The terrorists have known for a very long time what was going on in Abu Ghraib, Bagram, and other places. The only people who didn’t know were the American people who were paying for it.
Torturing people based on the word of a convicted con artist like Chalabi, who was selling us out to Iranian agents to help himself, shows the level of stupidity at the top.
I want them prosecuted and in prison, every one of them so we can show the world that this isn’t acceptable, that we aren’t going to paper it over by tossing a few of the other ranks in the brig. The people who did this are evil and need to be punished.
Sad to say, I expect every single one of them to die peacefully at home at age 85, a smile on their face, just like That #$%@ Richard Nixon (a man so crooked he needed a bed shaped like an S to sleep).
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Well, well. I was just checking C&L and saw this post. It seems that Keith Olbermann and Lawrence O’Donnell get it. I’m glad it’s not just us Bryan. 😉
Keith Olbermann Offers Sean Hannity $1000 For Every Second He Can Endure Waterboarding
IF it were me, I’d be offering $10k for every person that thinks Torture works can withstand being tortured, Spanish Inquisition style (after all, they are all devout Christians), for 5 minutes. 🙂 I’m very generous I know. A real torturer would make it an hour, minimum. Should make them all ecstatic really. They’ll all get to meet their maker sooner rather than later. 😆
While I fear you are right, Badtux, I don’t have to accept it, or like it.
I would like to ship everyone who wants to forget about this to SERE training, to see if they really think we should ignore it.
Between SERE in the military and the police academy, I have experienced all of these “techniques”. The military and police know better than to use civilians for this training – they don’t want to get sued.
The simple point is – if you know enough to be sure that the individual you have selected for torture actually has the information, you know enough not to need to do it. You are beyond information gathering to analysis, so stop wasting time and analyze.
Yep! I had assumed given your work in the USAF that you would have been through SERE. My team in the 80’s went through an advanced version of our equivalent since we would be more than likely to be spending most of our time behind *enemy lines*. I met a lot of US *specialists* in Cambodia and we compared notes and found that the training was very similar. Most people don’t even know what SERE actually stands fore, and even less what it actually means and what the point of it is! BTW, the closest the US have to what my team did I think are called ‘Scout Snipers’. They tend to have short careers.
It seems Liz Cheney is as ignorant and stupid as her father. They say the poisoned apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. I was amazed to see Norah O’Donnell of all people slapping down the young Darth Cheney as an ignorant fool. LOL
Norah O’Donnell slaps down Liz Cheney over the use of torture, what is ‘torture’ and her father’s role in it
BTW, in the C&L Post above (Olberman vs Hannity) There is some real fool wingnut in the comments. A perfect example of ignorance and stupidity.
Oh… Another thing that annoys me about all these ignoramuses talking about SERE… None of them can possible know anything about it. I’m pretty sure that in the USA, as here and every other Nation that has a SERE type school, you had to sign a lifetime NDA and were warned that if you opened your mouth about any details, you’d be in front of a Judge so fast you’d think teleportation was a reality! So, they are either breaking NDA’s or they don’t have a damned clue! I think I can guess which it is with some certainty.
AND they don’t force you to sign an NDA for the sake of the enemy not knowing anything about it, it’s so that any candidates don’t have any forewarning. It would kind of defeat the purpose if everyone knew the details of what will happen to you there. I remember reading with some amusement many years ago a news item about some Politician in the USA who wanted one of the SERE Schools rebuilt because… it was too dusty! LMAO
There is actually a second school after SERE which doesn’t have a name, and shouldn’t. SERE was simply called Survival School in the Air Force, and is lumped in the Arctic, Jungle, and Sea schools that teach about individual environments.
No one would believe you if you told them, so why bother? It, for damn sure, should not have been included in interrogation policy and it shouldn’t be openly discussed. Something else the Hedgemony has done to compromise the safety and security of the troops. Of course, given the way they threw the Reservists under the bus over Abu Ghraib, this should come as a shock to no one. Cheney and his buddy from their Nixon days, Rumsfeld, couldn’t give less of a crap for the troops. They were just peasants to be used and discarded like kleenex.
Liz Cheney was in the State Department, and she may be implicated as well as her father, so this may be self-interest as well as a defense of her father.
Yes. In fact, there is SERE, EOD and TACP. EOD is a year long and the washout rate (from memory) was over 60%. Mostly, it’s because it has a lot of academic and technical training and is mental tough. If you joined the military to avoid school, you aren’t going to get through EOD! TACP is very demanding physically and you need nerves of titanium! Each service and specialty has their own SERE course and it’s up to 6 months long. In fact, contrary to the misinformation being thrown around, SERE isn’t a *school*. It’s a career field of it’s own if anything. 🙂
Did you go through Fairchild survival school (336) Bryan? I hear that’s the toughest for you flyboys. 😉 😀 I only know about it from meeting a Guardian Angel team and we compared notes. 🙂
Ignorance really is bliss, isn’t it? 😉
You are probably right about Darth Liz. LOL
Fairchild is the standard school for everyone classified as Combat Crew. The second course is for intel types because it is assumed that they are “special interest targets”. A lot of fun was had by all … well, the instructors seemed to be having a good time.
You had done a lot of “volunteering” before you made it to the Cascade Mountains of Washington, and if you screwed up, you were out of the entire program and got to finish your enlistment as a clerk or a cook.
As far as the survival schools went, the Jungle school was the toughest physically, because in the Philippines they had local tribesman as the aggressor force pursuing you through the jungle, and those guys didn’t get tired, and weren’t bothered by the heat.
As Suvorov said “Train Hard, Fight Easy”.
moyers is good.
hercule poirot always solved mysteries by engaging the various suspects in conversation [and using his little gray cells].
hard to go wrong listening to people [unless maybe those people are named cheney, bush, rumsfeld, et al].
i had to laugh [bitterly, of course], first at the suggestion that our enemies apparently didn’t know what waterboarding was until we started releasing olc memos, and again when a commenter at paul krugman’s blog pointed out that all the ‘enhanced interrogation’ techniques that have been revealed so far have been written about in solzhenitsyn’s gulag archipelago.
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hipparchia: I hear that. I mean, the USA only prosecuted some Gestapo *interrogators* after WW2 for using waterboarding, then there was Pol Pot. Did you know Pol Pot (favored leader of the CIA after Vietnam) had his own personal waterboard kit? It’s in the Genocide Museum in Cambodia now. And all those good ol’ Christian fundies running around there should know that waterboatding was a favorite of the Inquisitors, right after hot pokers and flails etc. I guess that’s why they love it so much now. 🙂 I wonder if they have a drooling epiphany thinking about it?
I guess recent history is a dead subject in the USA then? Or most Americans just have very bad memories. 🙂
Bryan: As I recall… all the DI’s from basic (boot to you) on up were having a great time! I never met an instructor that had any concept of negotiation, compromise, or simple exhaustion! LOL
Yeah. I got dumoped in the simpson desert a 5 day walk from the nearest town with an Aboriginal guide who wasn’t allowed to communicate unless I was about to get myself killed. Getting sick as a dog was OK. Then a couple months in New Zealand in winter was a hoot. I almost lost a finger to frostbite during a 2-day blizzard. Then on to sunny Fiji for training similar to the Phillipines! The parts I saw have never been put on any travel brochures I assure you. That was special as I’d been assigned to Cambodia, and my team and I needed to discover that everything can kill you or just make you wish it had. 🙂 We spent a few months on mock missions to hone our skills. We were pretty pleased with the results, and they DEFINITELY saved our asses when we got to Cambodia, at least until the Cap, forward scout and medic were killed in an ambush that almost got us all. I still dream about that day, though not as often as I used to.
I wish I could take all these big mouthed moronic, sick fools back to that place and time. That would be justice.
pol pot. now there’s a name to make the skin crawl, even without knowing who he was. and no, i don’t think i knew about the personal waterboarding kit.
kids can be pretty bloodthirsty creatures. i remember reading with great relish details of the spanish inquisition techniques in high school world history class. otoh, it might have been so fascinating simply because, at the time, it seemed impossible that any modern-day human being could [or would] bring themselves do any of those things.
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I was checking GlobalSec as I vaguely remembered reading something some years ago relating to this topic. I found a PDF. Here’s a brief excerpt from CH. 2 that I think explains our frustration. I feel the same way as this Capt. and I suspect you do also.
The answer, as he discovered during his years in the Navy was, no, not everybody does understand what integrity, commitment, and loyalty mean.
And when the leaders of a Nation fail to understand what these principles mean, you are in a whole World of serious hurt!
PDF’s can be downloaded from:
Chapter 1 – HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES
Chapter 2 – THE LONG LOOK BACK
Chapter 3 – THE LESSONS OF WARTIME IMPRISONMENT
Chapter 4 – MORAL AND ETHICAL IMPLICATIONS OF SURVIVING CAPTIVITY
Ahh! I just found a document called ‘Environment of captivity’. Here’s an excerpt:
bold highlights mine.
What people can’t seem to understand about the terrorist organizations is that the people at the top are university educated, probably a majority at universities in the West, and they know all about the techniques. Hell, until after the Renaissance the Islamic world was the place to find scientific thinking and engineering. Anyone who thinks that building an “onion” dome doesn’t require engineering skills, gets their butts kicked by most modular shelving. The sort of people who schedule an emergency room visit after shopping at IKEA.
These aren’t a lot of “ignorant savages”, and one of the basic rules of war is “know your enemy”. The structure of al Qaeda is almost identical to a venture capital operation. Terrorist ops pitch ideas, and if the “board” likes them, they get funding and technical assistance. If you are out there looking for a chain of command structure, you aren’t going to find it, because it is a collection of individual groups operating independently under the name al Qaeda because it annoys the US and gives the group extra media coverage. At some point a group of Somali pirates, who are old-time “entrepreneurs of the ocean”, will decide to link themselves to al Qaeda just to watch the Western politicians soil themselves. Another group will grab the “Robin Hood” label, and all will be your standard seaborne thieves. I wouldn’t be surprised if some cheeky bastard said it was the Somali stimulus package because it seemed to be working for the pirates on Wall Street.
The Gestapo and KGB got almost no usable intel from torture, so they used it to get show trial confessions. Every study shows this. When it didn’t work for the KGB, they sent the individual to a psychiatric unit for failing to understand the value of cooperation. Stalin just killed people on suspicion of anything, or, if it was felt there was a need “to show progress”.
Torture is a crime. Criminals are supposed to be prosecuted. That is the end of the discussion. The reasons for committing the crime can be brought up in the sentencing phase after conviction. People who shoot burglars are charged, and have to justify their action. Doing nothing is not an option.