The Bush Years: Torture Unleashed!

Here's an interesting posting from Tom Ricks:

When retired Army Col. Stuart Herrington talks about intelligence, and especially about interrogation issues, I listen. His time in Vietnam was captured well in his book Silence was a Weapon also published under the title Stalking the Vietcong. He ran a secret interrogation operation on an island off the coast of Panama after the invasion of Panama, where, he says, much was learned about Noriega's relations with Cuba and the PLO. He ran a similar secret operation after the 1991 Gulf War. In 2004, he was asked to look into U.S. intelligence operations in Iraq and produced a scathing report that, to my knowledge, has never been released. (As I understand it, the report wasn't classified, but only two copies were made of it.) To my knowledge, he was one of the first people to blow the whistle on Abu Ghraib and on the broader abuse of prisoners that was occurring in many locations in Iraq back then.

Last November, Herrington gave a speech at Fort Leavenworth, sponsored by the CGSC Foundation, in which he explored how U.S. interrogation operations went badly off track after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, becoming both abusive and counterproductive. But he also worries that the remedies instituted could cripple our intelligence gathering efforts.

One of the most striking aspects of his talk is the cold professional contempt he has for Cheney, Rumsfeld and others who not only encouraged a brutal approach, but were amateurish in doing so.

Herrington began his talk by looking back to Vietnam, where he insisted on providing his prisoners(and intelligence targets) with "unconditional decent treatment-food, medical care and clothing." He showed his Vietnamese colleagues, fond of using "water torture and electrocution," that "One can employ legions of effective stratagems to achieve control over a potential recruit, but brutality, abuse and torture have no place."

He used the same approach after the invasion of Panama and the Gulf War, in each case establishing "guest houses" were prisoners were given air conditioned rooms and treated well. "We afforded unconditional decent treatment to our Iraqi guests," he said. "We did not gloat over the coalition's lopsided victory, but channeled their anger towards Saddam Hussein, who had set them up for defeat and humiliation."

His bottom line:

"There was no room on our team for charlatans who believed in sleep deprivation, inducing hypothermia, stress positions, face slapping, forced nudity, water boarding, blaring heavy metal music, or other amateurish, ineffective and ethically flawed tricks."

The Bush years created far more al Qaeda militants than it killed. It was a completely backwards approach to the threats to the US and the world. It created enemies when the US needed allies. It turned marginally angry people into fanatical suicidal killers. It was a tragedy for the American people and it raised the threat to innocent civilians around the world. History will judge Bush & Cheney harshly. I would hate to be related to them because their relatives will have to live with the ignominy the rest of their lives.

Herrington is concerned about how the stupid torture policy of Bush/Cheney has led to a less secure world. Here is another posting by Ricks that looks at the "blowback" from the idiot Bush/Cheney policies:

[Herrington] expressed concern about the current rules governing interrogation, I am inclined to pay attention.

As a result of a series of abuses, he said, new restrictions, new legal rulings, and a new manual have placed a series of new constraints on the handling of prisoners that deeply concern him. Much that was secret is now public and available to our foes. Also, lawyers are far more involved than in the past. "A detainee advised by an attorney is an interrogator's worse nightmare."

He is most alarmed by the new limits on separating prisoners. This is essential, he said, in order that prisoners not observe and police each other, tracking how long their comrades are interrogated and punishing collaborators. "Housing high-value detainees communally" (as was done at Guantanamo, he notes) "is fatal to successful interrogation." Yet now, under the Army Field Manual, separation may only be used against specific "unlawful enemy combatants," initially only for a period of 30 days, and requires the written approval of a four-star commander. Even then, a prisoner can only be isolated after a justification and interrogation plan has been provided and authorized by the chain of command. What's more, he adds, "Other prisoners-an Iranian Quds colonel or a North Korean officer, for example, cannot be separated, a true show-stopper."

He places blame for this outcome squarely on the shoulders of senior Bush administration officials:

For a professional interrogator, these new operating conditions are onerous, and translate into a net loss for our national security. Responsibility for this can be traced back to zealous officials in the Bush Administration who decided that brutality was an effective shortcut to obtaining good information-against the wisdom and experience of mainstream professional interrogators. . . . Ironically, their ill-advised and unethical actions were taken in the name of protecting the nation, but wound up doing harm.

My italics. Read it and weep.

I'm less pessimistic than Herrington about the tighter restrictions, but I understand his concerns. If it truly hampers the effectiveness of the fight to suppress al Qaeda, then I say "loosen the rules" but be cautious. I would trust Herrington because he understands that the madness of Bush/Cheney is operationally ineffective. Herrington is less worried about morality than I am, but I'm willing to be realistic about operational needs just like Herrington is willing to be sensitive to operataional effectiveness (and not just be a dupe of ideological craziness with the "torture" approach of Bush/Cheney).