[Vision2020] Humane Interrogations Work

[Donovan Arnold]

I think baking terrorists an apple pie is the right way to get them to share their secrets. Be their best friend. Then they will share their secrets of where they placed the bomb. 

I think maybe we should also promise them 77 virgins if they tell us. That way, we will be competing with the 73 virgins they were promised to blow people up. 

Walk with a big carrot and no stick. 

Best Regards,

Donovan

--- On Thu, 2/19/09, nickgier at roadrunner.com <nickgier at roadrunner.com> wrote:
From: nickgier at roadrunner.com <nickgier at roadrunner.com>
Subject: Re: [Vision2020] Humane Interrogations Work
To: "lfalen" <lfalen at turbonet.com>
Cc: vision2020 at moscow.com
Date: Thursday, February 19, 2009, 5:16 PM

Hi Roger,

My column was not about the surge so what you mention is simply not relevant.
You might want to read Thomas Rick's new book "The Gamble" before
repeating the conventional wisdom about the surge.  

Your answer here is totally evasive.  You have not defended your position that
the interrogation abuses were just aberrations. Furthermore, if you condemn
Rumsfeld then you must also condemn the man who kept him in office for 6 years,
and OK'd most if not all (we will never know how much Cheney and Addington
hid from him)of what historians will call systematic torture in violation of
international law and the moral laws of the universe.  It will take years for
this stain to be removed from our nation's honor.

There is never a "time and place" for "cruelty and
torture," and history has shown that there is never, as you state, any
"obvious potential gain" from it.  You are a good man, Roger, so
don't let this position of yours mar your virtue.

Thanks for the dialogue,

Nick

---- lfalen <lfalen at turbonet.com> wrote: 
> Nick
> In your article you may want to include that one of the main reasons for
the success of the serge was gaining the confidence of Abu Ahmed and other
former insurgents. If you want to go back into history the friendship of Tom
Jeffords with Cochise was the main reason for Cochise surrendering to General O.
O. Howard (Howard was the founder of Howard college for negroes in Washington
D.C.). There is a time and place for everything. Cruelty or torture for tortures
sake is to be abhorred.If it is to be used there had damn well better be an
obvious potential gain. Khalid Scheiikh Mohammed is a fanatic and it is doubtful
you could appeal to his good side. He wants to executed so he can be a martyr. I
would grant his wish. It is to be expected that you will get a lot of
misinformation and this should be taked into account.
> As for Rumsfield, He made a mess of thing like LBJ did in Vietnam. There
has been an improvement since his departure.
> Roger
> -----Original message-----
> From: nickgier at roadrunner.com
> Date: Tue, 17 Feb 2009 15:59:01 -0800
> To: vision2020 at moscow.com
> Subject: [Vision2020] Humane Interrogations Work
> 
> > Greetings:
> > 
> > This is my radio commentary for tomorrow and my column for the week. 
The full version is attached as a PDF file.
> > 
> > I will respond to Roger under the heading of "Paradox." 
Roger states that his "priority is the security of the United States and
saving a many lives as possible. What are your priorities?" Roger, I have
the same priorities as you but, as my column demonstrates, we do not have to
violate international law and make ourselves a moral pariah in the world to
fulfill this task.
> > 
> > Nick Gier
> > 
> > INTERROGATIONS NEED TO BE HUMANE NOT "ENHANCED" 
> > 
> > The weak will do anything to stop the pain;
> > The strong will resist until the end.  
> > --a Roman jurist on torture 
> > 
> > There were no orange jump suits, hoods, or shackles.  There was no
water boarding, stress positions, beatings, or sensory deprivation. Just outside
Washington, DC, Fort Hunt Park was home to 4,000 high level Nazi detainees
during World War II.  For the first time information about this project has been
declassified, and some American soldiers who worked there were recently
interviewed on National Public Radio on August 18, 2008.
> > 
> > At Fort Hunt Park American interrogators played tennis and ride
horses with the prisoners, and some were even invited off base to dinners at
local restaurants. One incident was laden with deep irony: three detainees were
allowed to go Christmas shopping for their families in a Jewish-owned department
store.
> > 
> > Some of the detainees were scientists with knowledge of the German
atomic bomb project. The future of Western civilization hung in the balance, but
still the U.S. strictly adhered to the Third Geneva Convention of 1929 with
regard to the humane treatment of prisoners. The Geneva Conventions do not make
any exceptions, not even for the most imminent danger and none for new
categories such as "unlawful combatants."
> > 
> > Donald Gregg worked for the CIA for 30 years and was a national
security adviser in the Reagan administration. While he was in Vietnam in the
early 1970s, he noticed that his South Vietnamese counterparts were getting very
poor intelligence. Gregg said that their basic problem was that "they
routinely tortured prisoners, producing a flood of information, much of it
totally false" (New York Times, 2/8/09).
> > 
> > Gregg took over the interrogation of a severely beaten prisoner. He
continues: "I treated the prisoner's wounds, reunited him with his
family and allowed him to make his first visit to Saigon. The result was a flood
of actionable intelligence that allowed us to disrupt planned operations,
including rocket attacks against Saigon."
> > 
> > In January 2002 Brig. Gen. Michael Lehnert was given orders to
prepare the Guantanamo Naval Base for the arrival of first detainees from
Afghanistan and Pakistan. Lehnert was very careful to follow the Geneva
Convention of 1949 with a special focus on Article 3.1c, which prohibits
"outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading
treatment." 
> > 
> > The Bush administration didn't think it was getting good enough
information from the detainees, so Rumsfeld set up a second command for
"enhanced" interrogations and soon there was a major hunger strike and
plans for forced feeding were being made.  
> > 
> > Lehnert and a Muslim chaplain intervened and spent time one-one-one
with the prisoners. As one surprised German detainee said later after his
release: "Lehnert wanted to speak to the prisoners as human beings." 
For example, the Muslim chaplain placed a call to one detainee's wife and he
received the good news that she had delivered a baby boy.
> > 
> > Rumsfeld removed Lehnert from his command and the hunger strike that
he had nearly quelled flared up again.  Forced feeding was implemented along
with, as Jane Mayer describes it her book The Dark Side, "harsher
interrogation techniques," including water boarding, total sensory
deprivation, being shackled in stress positions, "psychological torment
including religious and sexual humiliation," and the use of dogs to induce
the extreme fear that Muslims have of them.  
> > 
> > In 2006 Matthew Alexander, with 14 years of experience as an Air
Force helicopter pilot and counter-intelligence agent, volunteered as an
interrogator in Iraq.  It was his understanding that all interviews would abide
by the Army Field Manual's prohibition on inhumane treatment, but he soon
discovered that "enhanced" techniques were being used instead.
> > 
> > Alexander, a pseudonym required by the Defense Department, refused to
break the rules and he insisted on training his team according to "a new
methodology -- one based on building rapport with suspects, showing cultural
understanding and using good old-fashioned brainpower to tease out
information." His humane methods resulted in finding the location and the
killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq. After his
return to the U.S., Alexander was disgusted to learn that Iraqi detainees were
still being tortured. 
> > 
> > Bush administration officials claimed that their techniques were
justified because they received actionable intelligence.  These claims, however,
have been found to be false. After 53 days of the most degrading treatment
imaginable, Mohammed al-Qahtani produced information that, according to FBI
agent Brittain Mallow, had already been obtained "from conventional
detective work." 
> > 
> > Mayer has determined that President Bush's three major claims
about the results of torturing Abu Zubayda were false. For example, Bush claimed
that Zubayda told interrogators that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was the 9/11
mastermind.  The 9/11 Commission discovered that the CIA already knew this on
August 28, 2001, while Bush, preferring to cut brush on his ranch, ignored
frequent warning of imminent attacks on the U.S.
> > 
> > The torture of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed led to a mass of false
information.  His false confession of personally killing Daniel Pearl caused
unnecessary emotional turmoil for Pearl's widow and the rest of his family. 

> > 
> > The case of Ibn al-Libi is an especially egregious example of forced
confession.  In December, 2001, al-Libi had been turned over to the CIA by the
Pakistanis and was then sent to Egypt to be interrogated. He didn't know who
Saddam Hussein was, but under torture, he made up a story about three Al Qaeda
members going to Iraq to learn about nuclear weapons.
> > 
> > Mayer discovered that there were suspicions (she had access to one
Defense Department memo) all along that al-Libi's confessions were
unreliable. Nevertheless, President Bush used the false connection between
Hussein and Al Qaeda in an October 2002 speech, and it also was part of Colin
Powell's sorely regretted presentation at the UN in February 2003, just
before the invasion of Iraq.
> > 
> > Returning now to Donald Gregg, Bush 41's national security man,
he concludes his short but powerful column with a story about a high level Iraqi
detainee who was treated humanely and who provided a great deal of valuable
information. The man interrogated was Saddam Hussein.
> > 
> > Nick Gier taught philosophy for 31 years at the University of Idaho.
Read his other column on torture at
www.home.roadrunner.com/~nickgier/torture.htm The main sources for this column
were Jane Mayer, The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror turned
into a War on American Ideals; Karen J. Greenberg, "When Gitmo was
(relatively) Good," The Washington Post (Jan. 25, 2009); and Matthew
Alexander, "I'm Still Tortured by What I Saw in Iraq," The
Washington Post (Nov. 30, 2008).
> > 
> > 
> > 

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