Former Interrogator Still Tormented by Recollections of Practices Used in Iraq

by Damozel | "Matthew Alexander"---writing under a nom de guerre for security reasons---led the team of interrogators hunted down the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq (Abu Musab al-Zarqawi) and authored a book called "How to Break a Terrorist." (WaPo)  Despite his success, he continues to be tortured (his word) by recollections of what he saw as an interrogator in Iraq.

Nothing he says in this article is different from what opponents of torture, including military opponents of torture, have been saying all along.   But as it's a powerful statement of the case against torture---or, as I believe they're known, "enhanced interrogation techniques"---I think it should be added to the accumulating evidence that torture is the last refuge of chickenhawks who think real life is well portrayed by what they see in "24."  But Alexander, an interrogator who has served 14 years in the Air Force, says:  "What I saw in Iraq still rattles me---both because it betrays our traditions and because it just doesn't work....." (WaPo)

What I...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..... 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. (WaPo)

Not only, he continues, is torture a violation of American principles, but it helps to inflame sentiment against Amerians and therefore costs lives.

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.(WaPo)

It seems that getting to know your enemy has not only moral and human advantages, but intelligence ones as well.

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....

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....

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."  (WaPo)

Did these breakthroughs change the tactics favored by the powers-that-were?  Does Dick Cheney have lips?

Nor do the pro-torture bloggers seem open to admitting that they might have got it wrong.  At VetVoice, Brandon Friedman remarks:

What I find most ironic about this is how it now affects torture cheerleaders.  Take the conservative, military-oriented site Blackfive, for instance.  They've consistently feigned support for the troops by advocating for torture.  And of course, when the Zarqawi kill was announced, they were euphoric.  For the mission's ultimate success, they seemed to praise everybody: the pilots, the people who built the airplanes, the kid who wiped the canopy clean before mission, and even the person who invented GPS.  But in their self-righteous gloating, the one group of people they forgot to praise were the ones who actually got the critical information that let us know where Zarqawi was--the interrogators who didn't torture.  

And that oversight is symbolic of all of America's torture advocates--and their complete and total misunderstanding of what's important when you're fighting an insurgency.  Matthew Alexander--the interrogator who ended Zarqawi's reign of terror in Iraq--is living proof.

You may read BLACKFIVE's rant-in-response here.  "Uncle Jimbo," it seems, finds that facts are not stubborn things and may be safely dispensed with in favor of the will to bully, jeer, and inflict retaliatory pain to those who deserve it (or might deserve it), and never mind whether it achieves anything at all or causes more and worse terrorist attacks or gets American soldiers killed.  Or so he appears to be saying.  

Alan Colmes reflecting on "Alexander's" piece, picks up on one of "Alexander's" points that the Anbar Awakening---so crucial to the surge---likewise represented a turning away from the harsh interrogation techniques that the "torture cheerleaders" cheer for. 

Sullivan points out that the testimony of actual interrogators, who were actually in the field interrogating, and who knew what was working and what was not, explodes (his word) the myth that engaging in torture makes a nation safer.

[Alexander] reminds us that we found Zarqawi through interrogation by traditional methods, and that this humane approach would have given us better information and helped us turn around the Sunnis against al Qaeda sooner.

Tim F. at Balloon Juice says,

When I picture a schmuck like Andrew McCarthy turning on the laptop after an hour in a dark room ‘reviewing’ photos from abu Ghraib, and then reading this, the liberal in me feels something like sympathy. The flame of hope that he too could one day crush the fingers of a muslim child will die hard.

And Phoenix Woman says: "But of course this wasn’t on any of the TV or radio news programs that most Americans are likeliest to encounter, so this will disappear down the memory hole for all but regular internet news perusers. They’re far more likely to see the fictional Jack Bauer on TV successfully using torture as an interrogation tool."

SEE MEMEORANDUM FOR MORE.

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