Torture? It probably killed more Americans than 9/11

[FourScore]

Torture? It probably killed more Americans than 9/11
A US major reveals the inside story of military interrogation in Iraq. By Patrick Cockburn, winner of the 2009 Orwell Prize for journalism
Sunday, 26 April 2009


The use of torture by the US has proved so counter-productive that it may have led to the death of as many US soldiers as civilians killed in 9/11, says the leader of a crack US interrogation team in Iraq.

"The reason why foreign fighters joined al-Qa'ida in Iraq was overwhelmingly because of abuses at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib and not Islamic ideology," says Major Matthew Alexander, who personally conducted 300 interrogations of prisoners in Iraq. It was the team led by Major Alexander that obtained the information that led to the US military being able to locate Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the head of al-Qa'ida in Iraq. Zarqawi was then killed by bombs dropped by two US aircraft on the farm where he was hiding outside Baghdad on 7 June 2006. Major Alexander said that he learnt where Zarqawi was during a six-hour interrogation of a prisoner with whom he established relations of trust.

Major Alexander's attitude to torture by the US is a combination of moral outrage and professional contempt. "It plays into the hands of al-Qa'ida in Iraq because it shows us up as hypocrites when we talk about human rights," he says. An eloquent and highly intelligent man with experience as a criminal investigator within the US military, he says that torture is ineffective, as well as counter-productive. "People will only tell you the minimum to make the pain stop," he says. "They might tell you the location of a house used by insurgents but not that it is booby-trapped."

In his compelling book How to Break a Terrorist, Major Alexander explains that prisoners subjected to abuse usually clam up, say nothing, or provide misleading information. In an interview he was particularly dismissive of the "ticking bomb" argument often used in the justification of torture. This supposes that there is a bomb timed to explode on a bus or in the street which will kill many civilians. The authorities hold a prisoner who knows where the bomb is. Should they not torture him to find out in time where the bomb is before it explodes?

Major Alexander says he faced the "ticking time bomb" every day in Iraq because "we held people who knew about future suicide bombings". Leaving aside the moral arguments, he says torture simply does not work. "It hardens their resolve. They shut up." He points out that the FBI uses normal methods of interrogation to build up trust even when they are investigating a kidnapping and time is of the essence. He would do the same, he says, "even if my mother was on a bus" with a hypothetical ticking bomb on board. It is quite untrue to imagine that torture is the fastest way of obtaining information, he says.

A career officer, Major Alexander spent 14 years in the US air force, beginning by flying helicopters for special operations. He saw combat in Bosnia and Kosovo, was an air force counter-intelligence agent and criminal interrogator, and was stationed in Saudi Arabia, with an anti-terrorist role, during the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. Some years later, the US army was short of interrogators. He wanted to help shape developments in Iraq and volunteered.

Arriving in Iraq in early 2006 he found that the team he was working with were mostly dedicated, but young, men between 18 and 24. "Many of them had never been out of the States before," he recalls. "When they sat down to interrogate somebody it was often the first time they had met a Muslim." In addition to these inexperienced officers, Major Alexander says there was "an old guard" of interrogators using the methods employed at Guantanamo. He could not say exactly what they had been doing for legal reasons, though in the rest of the interview he left little doubt that prisoners were being tortured and abused. The "old guard's" methods, he says, were based on instilling "fear and control" in a prisoner.

He refused to take part in torture and abuse, and forbade the team he commanded to use such methods. Instead, he says, he used normal US police interrogation techniques which are "based on relationship building and a degree of deception". He adds that the deception was often of a simple kind such as saying untruthfully that another prisoner has already told all.

Before he started interrogating insurgent prisoners in Iraq, he had been told that they were highly ideological and committed to establishing an Islamic caliphate in Iraq, Major Alexander says. In the course of the hundreds of interrogations carried out by himself, as well as more than 1,000 that he supervised, he found that the motives of both foreign fighters joining al-Qa'ida in Iraq and Iraqi-born members were very different from the official stereotype.

In the case of foreign fighters – recruited mostly from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria, Yemen and North Africa – the reason cited by the great majority for coming to Iraq was what they had heard of the torture in Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. These abuses, not fundamentalist Islam, had provoked so many of the foreign fighters volunteering to become suicide bombers.

For Iraqi Sunni Arabs joining al-Qa'ida, the abuses played a role, but more often the reason for their recruitment was political rather than religious. They had taken up arms because the Shia Arabs were taking power; de-Baathification marginalised the Sunni and took away their jobs; they feared an Iranian takeover. Above all, al-Qa'ida was able to provide money and arms to the insurgents. Once, Major Alexander recalls, the top US commander in Iraq, General George Casey, came to visit the prison where he was working. Asking about what motivated the suspected al-Qa'ida prisoners, he was at first given the official story that they were Islamic Jihadi full of religious zeal. Major Alexander intervened to say that this really was not true and there was a much more complicated series of motivations at work. General Casey did not respond.

The objective of Major Alexander's team was to find Zarqawi, the Jordanian born leader of al-Qa'ida who built it into a fearsome organisation. Attempts by US military intelligence to locate him had failed despite three years of trying. Major Alexander was finally able to persuade one of Zarqawi's associates to give away his location because the associate had come to reject his methods, such as the mass slaughter of civilians.

What the major discovered was that many of the Sunni fighters were members of, or allied to, al-Qa'ida through necessity. They did not share its extreme, puritanical Sunni beliefs or hatred of the Shia majority. He says that General Casey had ignored his findings but he was pleased when General David Petraeus became commander in Iraq and began to take account of the real motives of the Sunni fighters. "He peeled back those Sunnis from al-Qa'ida," he says.

In the aftermath of his experience in Iraq, which he left at the end of 2006, Major Alexander came to believe that the battle against the US using torture was more important than the war in Iraq. He sees President Obama's declaration against torture as "a historic victory", though he is concerned about loopholes remaining and the lack of accountability of senior officers. Reflecting on his own interrogations, he says he always monitored his actions by asking himself, "If the enemy was doing this to one of my troops, would I consider it torture?" His overall message is that the American people do not have to make a choice between torture and terror.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/torture-it-probably-killed-more-americans-than-911-1674396.html

[NYC_SKP]

1. K&R nt

[bottomtheweaver]

2. This is what happens when the MIC figures out how to steal the WH.

If there isn't an actual enemy to spend billions pummeling, they spend billions creating one. Other reasons for torture are:

- It's fun (sheer sexual sadism--reason numero uno),

- It's scary (keeps us in line),

- It makes us all torturers (so we don't get any funny ideas about justice), and

- It produces a little fake intel, but they could just make that up anyway.

So basically it's SUPPOSED to be counterproductive. Mind-boggling, isn't it?

[Kitty Herder]

3. K&R

[Occam Bandage]

4. This claim is absolutely absurd.

Does anyone here really think that Iraqis wouldn't have formed resistance movements had the US not tortured? That is to say, that the PNAC plan was entirely sound except for the fact that we tortured people? That had we not tortured, Iraqis would have greeted us with flowers and open arms, and would have simply forgiven us for isolating, starving, bombing, invading, demolishing, mismanaging, and overall raping their country? That the power vacuum we created would not have been filled with violence and anger? That there would have been no civil war, or that the civil war would not extend to harming Americans?

To believe that torture resulted in the deaths of thousands of Americans is to forget every reason Iraqis would have had to take up arms against us but the one reason the news media has spent the last few weeks talking about (and that the author undoubtedly spent years obsessing over).

"Torture killed more Americans than it saved" is reasonable. "The Iraqi insurgency would not have existed in any widespread manner if not for torture" is bizarre.

[w4rma]

6. What the hell are you doing on this site if you support torture as American policy? (nt)

[Occam Bandage]

8. There is a profound difference between

"torture was a bad idea that compromised our national values and put Americans at risk" and "the Iraqi insurgency would not have existed if not for torture."

Again: Do you think that had Bush forbidden anyone from torturing anyone, that the Iraqis would have greeted us with flowers and chocolates, and that the Iraq war would have been a cakewalk? No? Then you agree with me and disagree with the article.

[w4rma]

13. Gotcha. I hadn't realized that you had focused on a minor wording difference. (nt)

[Egnever]

7. hmm

You dont think the mass arrests of Iraqis and the abuse they suffered at Abu grab had anything at all to do with helping to build resentment against americans?

I find that pretty suprising coming from you. You're a smart guy. We rape daughters and sons and that has no blow back? Come on man.

[Occam Bandage]

9. No, of course I don't think that.

I did say that it was reasonable to suggest that torture killed more Americans than it saved. Of course it helped build resentment. But unless you think that the Iraqis would not have formed a resistance killing thousands of Americans had there been no waterboarding at Gitmo, the headline's claim is hyperbolic and should not be taken seriously.

"Torture helped fuel the insurgency that killed more Americans than 9/11" is a reasonable statement. "If it weren't for torture, the insurgency would not have killed thousands of Americans" casts aside every single other reason the Iraqis would have had to fight us, many of which (that whole bombing campaign and violent occupation thing) are far, far more compelling than the semi-secret use of harsh interrogation techniques, which did not even enter the Muslim world until a year into the occupation, at which point the insurgency was already boiling fiercely.

[MajorChode]

10. Where are you seeing that quote?

I can't find "The Iraqi insurgency would not have existed in any widespread manner if not for torture" anywhere in the article.

I don't think anyone believes that the Iraqis wouldn't have formed resistance groups had the US not tortured, but the question is how large and powerful those groups would have became and how long would they have lasted if the US had not tortured.

I believe people join such groups because they feel they are on the side of right and they are fighting what they perceive as injustice. Certainly since the invasion of Iraq could never be justified in the first place, you're going to get a considerable amount of fuel to sustain some of those fires, but all the torture did was to stoke those fires and add more fuel.

I have a problem with the numbers because the number of Americans killed in Iraq after the torture was revealed roughly equals the number killed in 9/11, so one would have to assume that all of them were killed by people who joined the resistance movement as a direct result of torture and I don't think anyone can say that.

[Occam Bandage]

12. I'm pretty sure anyone, including you yourself given your reply, can see

that is intended as a paraphrase and not as a direct quote.

As for the Iraq insurgency not existing in a widespread manner if not for torture? You yourself also make the claim that in order for the headline claim to be valid, nearly every American killed after torture was disclosed would have to have been killed specifically because of torture, and would not have been killed if not for torture. That is to say, you make the claim that in order for the article's headline to be valid, it would have to be the case that, were it not for torture, the latter-day Iraqi insurgency would not have killed a significant number of Americans.

I think the difference between "would not have existed in any widespread manner" and 'would not have killed a significant number of Americans' is insignificant.

[Amonester]

5. Let's all DU this link to the WH (and)...

to as many CONTACT links to Sens. & Reps. as possible

http://www.whitehouse.gov/CONTACT/

K&R

[Echo In Light]

11. K&R - PNACers getting what their blueprint called for: conflict/chaos