More wankery from Krauthammer

(8 am. – promoted by ek hornbeck)

There are plenty of GOP hacks out there, but, sometimes, one writes something so infuriating that you simply must respond.

Below the fold is my letter that replies to Krauthammer’s latest wankery, “Torture? No.  Except…”

Mr. Krauthammer,

Upon reading your latest article, “Torture? No. Except…“, I found that you, like many conservative pundits, are sadly misinformed about many things.  I am a veteran, having spent ten years in the United States Air Force and was deployed to Saudi Arabia and Iraq during the First Gulf War.  I am a military-trained Explosive Ordnance Disposal specialist, or, bomb disposal specialist, who has 19 years experience in the field.  Thus, let me proceed to explain to you exactly why your “ticking time bomb” scenario is, and has been, a myth designed to scare poor children.

As anyone who watches television knows, Improvised Explosive Devices (IED) can only be initiated by an electronic timer, and, it takes the bomb squad rushing in at the last second to save the day.  Unfortunately, while it makes for great hollywood drama, it is not reality.  The IRA were using cutting edge technology to detonate IED’s in their fight with Britain back in the 1980’s, technology which included laser boobytraps and radio-remote command detonation.  With the advent of cellular phones that give world-wide coverage, terrorists have found a new favorite means of detonating IED’s with lethal consequences.  What you do not find anymore, however, are “timers” in them that countdown to zero.  Your “ticking time bomb” scenario became implausible 30 to 40 years ago.  In today’s age of technology, IED’s are almost exclusively command detonated, meaning, that the bomb is detonated whenever the terrorist wishes for it to be.  Suicide bombers use deadman switches.  Roadside bombs in Iraq and Afghanistan are detonated using cell phones.  In your fantasy scenario, law enforcement must catch one terrorist, and, then catch the rest of the terrorists after the plot has already been initiated.  All three “plots” that were foiled in the United States were foiled in the planning stage.  Even if one terrorist “got away” with a device, no amount of torture could stop that terrorist from command detonating the bomb at whatever place and time they wish.

You then go on to state, “Some people, however, believe you never torture. Ever. They are akin to conscientious objectors who will never fight in any war under any circumstances, and for whom we correctly show respect by exempting them from war duty.”  Again, you are simply wrong.  Before George W. Bush, everyone knew that torture was illegal and that you simply didn’t do it.  I direct you to an article written by Joe Galloway of the McClatchy newspaper:

Four decades ago in the field in Vietnam, I saw a suspected Viet Cong waterboarded by South Vietnamese Army troops. The American Army advisers who were attached to the Vietnamese unit turned their backs and walked away before the torture began. It was then a Vietnamese affair and something they couldn’t be associated with.

The victim was taken to the edge of death. His body was wracked with spasms as he fought for air. The soldier holding the five-gallon kerosene tin filled with muddy water from a nearby stream kept pouring it slowly onto the rag, and the victim desperately sucking for even a little air kept inhaling that water instead.

It seemed to go on forever. Did the suspect talk? I’m sure he did. I’m sure he told his torturers whatever he thought they wanted to hear, whether it was true or not. But I didn’t see the end of it because one of the American advisers came to me and told me I had to leave; that I couldn’t watch this interrogation, if that’s what it was, any longer.

That adviser knew that water torture was torture; he knew that it was outlawed by the Geneva Convention; he knew that he couldn’t be a part to it; and he knew that he didn’t want me to witness such brutality.

As for your statement that people who won’t torture never get into a position of authority, I direct your attention to Major Gen. John Fugh (Ret.), Rear Admiral Don Guter (Ret.), Rear Admiral John Hutson (Ret.), Brig. Gen. David Brahms (Ret.), all of whom were Judge Advocate General’s, all of whom state without reservation that waterboarding is torture and that torture is illegal:

In the course of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s consideration of President Bush’s nominee for the post of Attorney General, there has been much discussion, but little clarity, about the legality of “waterboarding” under United States and international law. We write because this issue above all demands clarity: Waterboarding is inhumane, it is torture, and it is illegal.

In 2006 the Senate Judiciary Committee held hearings on the authority to prosecute terrorists under the war crimes provisions of Title 18 of the U.S. Code. In connection with those hearings the sitting Judge Advocates General of the military services were asked to submit written responses to a series of questions regarding “the use of a wet towel and dripping water to induce the misperception of drowning (i.e., waterboarding) . . .” Major General Scott Black, U.S. Army Judge Advocate General, Major General Jack Rives, U.S. Air Force Judge Advocate General, Rear Admiral Bruce MacDonald, U.S. Navy Judge Advocate General, and Brigadier Gen. Kevin Sandkuhler, Staff Judge Advocate to the Commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps, unanimously and unambiguously agreed that such conduct is inhumane and illegal and would constitute a violation of international law, to include Common Article 3 of the 1949 Geneva Conventions.

We agree with our active duty colleagues. This is a critically important issue – but it is not, and never has been, a complex issue, and even to suggest otherwise does a terrible disservice to this nation. All U.S. Government agencies and personnel, and not just America’s military forces, must abide by both the spirit and letter of the controlling provisions of international law. Cruelty and torture – no less than wanton killing – is neither justified nor legal in any circumstance. It is essential to be clear, specific and unambiguous about this fact – as in fact we have been throughout America’s history, at least until the last few years. Abu Ghraib and other notorious examples of detainee abuse have been the product, at least in part, of a self-serving and destructive disregard for the well- established legal principles applicable to this issue. This must end.

You then go on to state that we should torture a detainee for information and you even cite George Tenet and Michael Hayden, who have the most to gain by making this issue seem other than what it was — an illegal program of torture — as stating that they got “good intel”.  This is directly contradicted by interrogators on the ground who were involved in interrogating detainees.  Malcom Nance, a Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape (SERE) instructor unequivocally states that waterboarding is torture.  Ali Soufan, an interrogator who represented the FBI during Zubaydah’s interrogation, states just as unequivocally that he was able to extract good, actionable intelligence before the decision was made to torture.  He states:

It is inaccurate, however, to say that Abu Zubaydah had been uncooperative. Along with another F.B.I. agent, and with several C.I.A. officers present, I questioned him from March to June 2002, before the harsh techniques were introduced later in August. Under traditional interrogation methods, he provided us with important actionable intelligence.

We discovered, for example, that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. Abu Zubaydah also told us about Jose Padilla, the so-called dirty bomber. This experience fit what I had found throughout my counterterrorism career: traditional interrogation techniques are successful in identifying operatives, uncovering plots and saving lives.

There was no actionable intelligence gained from using enhanced interrogation techniques on Abu Zubaydah that wasn’t, or couldn’t have been, gained from regular tactics. In addition, I saw that using these alternative methods on other terrorists backfired on more than a few occasions – all of which are still classified. The short sightedness behind the use of these techniques ignored the unreliability of the methods, the nature of the threat, the mentality and modus operandi of the terrorists, and due process.

You have never served our nation in our military, you have never been to war, and you haven’t been involved in interrogating prisoners.  You simply are, and continue to be, nothing more than a GOP hack that is given a national platform to spew whatever garbage you want regardless of the facts.  That your continued ignorance is allowed to be printed by any newspaper of note is merely a testament of how far our media has fallen, becoming nothing more than a three-ring circus where the biggest clowns get rewarded.  There may well come a day, as printed newspapers go out of business, when journalism gets back to being beneficial for society.  Already, journalists who write for blogs are doing far more journalism in one day then you do in a year printing your factless garbage.

Our military men and women got put into an untenable situation when they were ordered to torture prisoners.  While our military were rightly tried, convicted and sent to prison, the individuals who ordered the torture remain above and outside of the law.  Bush authorized the torture, then, hung our military out to dry when it became public that we were torturing people.  People like you will never understand how that destroyed the morale of our military.  Our men and women have gone to war in Iraq and Afghanistan over and over, sometimes for six deployments, watching friends die, wondering on what deployment they will die, and then they got hung out to dry by a President who stated on television that “we don’t torture”.  Obviously, we did, because they went to jail.  Let me introduce you to Alyssa Peterson:

Peterson, 27, a Flagstaff, Ariz., native, served with C Company, 311th Military Intelligence BN, 101st Airborne. Peterson was an Arabic-speaking interrogator assigned to the prison at our air base in troubled Tal Afar in northwestern Iraq. According to official records, she died on Sept. 15, 2003, from a “non-hostile weapons discharge.”

A “non-hostile weapons discharge” leading to death is not unusual in Iraq, often quite accidental, so this one apparently raised few eyebrows. The Arizona Republic, three days after her death, reported that Army officials “said that a number of possible scenarios are being considered, including Peterson’s own weapon discharging, the weapon of another soldier discharging, or the accidental shooting of Peterson by an Iraqi civilian.” And that might have ended it right there.

But in this case, a longtime radio and newspaper reporter named Kevin Elston, not satisfied with the public story, decided to probe deeper in 2005, “just on a hunch,” he told me in late 2006 (there’s a chapter about it in my book on Iraq and the media, “So Wrong for So Long”). He made “hundreds of phone calls” to the military and couldn’t get anywhere, so he filed a Freedom of Information Act [FOIA] request. When the documents of the official investigation of her death arrived, they contained bombshell revelations. Here’s what the Flagstaff public radio station, KNAU, where Elston then worked, reported:

“Peterson objected to the interrogation techniques used on prisoners. She refused to participate after only two nights working in the unit known as the cage. Army spokespersons for her unit have refused to describe the interrogation techniques Alyssa objected to. They say all records of those techniques have now been destroyed.”

According to the official report on her death released the following year, she had earlier been “reprimanded” for showing “empathy” for the prisoners. One of the most moving parts of that report is: “She said that she did not know how to be two people; she … could not be one person in the cage and another outside the wire.”

Peterson was then assigned to the base gate, where she monitored Iraqi guards, and sent to suicide prevention training. “But on the night of September 15th, 2003, Army investigators concluded she shot and killed herself with her service rifle,” the documents disclose.

A notebook she had been writing was found next to her body. Its contents were redacted in the official report.

The Army talked to some of Peterson’s colleagues. Asked to summarize their comments, Elston told me: “The reactions to the suicide were that she was having a difficult time separating her personal feelings from her professional duties. That was the consistent point in the testimonies, that she objected to the interrogation techniques, without describing what those techniques were.”

Elston said that the documents also refer to a suicide note found on her body, which suggested that she found it ironic that suicide prevention training had taught her how to commit suicide. He filed another FOIA request for a copy of the actual note.

But, a hack like yourself will never understand what drove Alyssa Peterson to kill herself.  I might suggest that you go back and look at the photos from Abu Ghraib, read the public documents that describe the torture firsthand, and, read how some detainee’s deaths were listed as “homicides” by the military, meaning, that interrogators killed the detainees while torturing them.  This is what Alyssa Peterson was asked to do to another human being, to be party to, but, she chose to kill herself instead.  That is your “catch-22”.  That is what Bush authorizing torture did to our military men and women.