2) I appreciate the improvement in tone since comment 11; no more “are you on crack” stuff, thank you.

3) Re Abu Ghraib, there’s what should have happened there and what in fact did happen there. England and Graner had reason to believe they were doing “higher”s bidding, even if they were “creative” about it. And it wasn’t just them, or the photos that they took. Provance reports a kid was mistreated so his dad would crack — utterly reprehensible stuff. Civilian contractors did worse - esp. one fellow, N. Some of this was military, some wasn’t, but it was all on Rummie’s and Cheney’s and Bush’s watch. They made it happen. My understanding of A.G. is second-hand, of course, mainly via Tara McKelvey’s book “Monstering”, and what I’ve gleaned from various news accounts.

4) To pick up on what Nell writes, and supply some links, the point isn’t just Abu Ghraib. It’s Guantanamo and Gardez and Bagram and other incidents that have left too many prisoners dead, too many abused, too many sure to hate us for the rest of their lives. (And those are just the ones we know about.) A system was built up that was designed to shirk responsibility — slow, slow investigations, whitewashes when they happened, and refusal to follow the trail up to where it should have gone.

I am prior enlisted 97E interrogator (now called a 35M). In Iraq I conducted dozens of interrogations early in the war because we were so short-handed, although technicaly what I was doing was only “tactical questioning” because by regulation I wasn’t allowed to interrogate since I was not specifically assigned to that position. Still, it was a hell of a learning experience.

If you want to know more about me, you can click the link on my name and go to my blog. From there, there’s my bio and links to my photos in Iraq.

This had nothing to do with anything resembling legitimate interrogation, for the most part, but some of the worst abuses, in which prisoners were beaten to death, were carried out by “interrogators”.

I’m concerned that these extreme and relatively well-reported cases blot out the extent to which the abuse that resulted in the deaths of Dilawar and Habibullah was routine for dozens, perhaps hundreds of other Bagram prisoners who did not die: beatings, being hung by the wrists from the ceiling, being held naked, exposed to freezing cold.

There’s a much deeper problem of ignorance, fear, entitlement, and impunity here than Ray or John Lohan want to acknowledge.

I could maybe see the value in asking Gen Sanchez to testify, but Donald Rumsfeld? Are you on crack? He was thousands of miles away and had no idea what was going on. In the United States, do we have the US attorney general testify every time a prisoner is abused in any local jail?

To Ray Bennett: I’m a little confused here. You are an interrogator also? The post above was written in the third person - so were you both the writer of the post and the interviewee? Are are you both interrogators named “Ray”?

As to my person: I retired in 2006, hardly “long ago”, with deployments to Iraq. Let’s agree, again, that the military is not the big problem here. I’m not trying to assign blame (although inevitably some will think so), but rather trying to influence what we do from this point forward. The “blame game” can be taken up by someone else, it is not my issue.

The soldiers responsible here were military police who were doing it out of boredom
No, they were told to “soften up” prisoners, and were told to use military dogs as part of that process. I respectfully disagree a bit with Ray here — yes, they ran amok… but I think a situation was deliberately created where they would run amok. They thought they were doing the right thing, they didn’t think there would be consequences (other than maybe medals) — all those thumbs ups and smiles tell me so.

EVERY SINGLE ONE of the Abu Gharaib defendants tried to claim they were told to torture, and that defense failed every single time
You betcha — the proximate cause why that defense failed is because they weren’t really allowed to pursue it (HRF link, NYT link) From the latter:

In denying defense requests for testimony from witnesses including Mr. Rumsfeld and Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, formerly the top American commander in Iraq, an Army judge, Col. James Pohl, ruled that their actions did not have any direct bearing on the reservists’ conduct.

So the evidence was never weighed. That’s a legalistic victory for you and Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld, I guess, but it’s part of the shame of these events for many of us.

people are deliberately demonizing the military for political purposes relating to the war.
Generally speaking, I think no one is demonizing the entire military here. But the notorious Abu Ghraib case is but one episode of torture and cruel/inhumane/degrading treatment, treatment that led to over 100 deaths in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo (I count the suicides). Like it or not — I can tell you don’t — many of those abuses occurred in the US military, and that makes them the military’s responsibility (and those who bent and broke prior policies to encourage those abuses). Let’s not let the good conduct of most soldiers turn into an alibi for bad conduct when it happens.

The blame for this treatment belongs at the top: people like Yoo who concocted legal fig leaves for it, people like William Haynes II who misled JAGs into thinking it was disapproved when the opposite was the case, people like Rumsfeld who asked “why just 4 hours? I stand for 8 hours”. And people like Bush and Cheney who pushed for waterboarding and “enhanced interrogations” going beyond the Field Manual, and monitored events to see they were getting what they wanted. Those two should have been impeached long ago, and still should be in my opinion. So no, this isn’t deliberately demonizing the military (though I assume we both wish there were more Sgt Provances and fewer Chuck Graners in it). It’s criticizing the people who pushed military into abuses at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, Bagram, Gardez, and elsewhere.

Incidentally, I am a current US Army officer, Iraqi vet, and a former interrogator. I also questioned dozens of Iraqi prisoners myself. To answer KathyF’s question, most interrogators vary in age from pretty young to retirement age. They are normally all enlisted or warrant officers. It’s very rare for an officer to conduct an interrogation - they are not trained for it. Since I was one of the few that had been previously trained, I filled in sometimes because we were so short handed, especially very early in the war.

Let me clear up some myths - the military does not, and has never (in my lifetime anyway) condoned torture. (To answer this one in advance, Waterboarding was used by the CIA, not the military, and in any case was only used on three high level Al-Qaida members.) Yes, some prisoners were abused or tortured in Iraq. But at least 99% of these incidents were NOT done by interrogators or for the purpose of interrogation - like Abu Gharaib, for example. The soldiers responsible here were military police who were doing it out of boredom, not to gain any intelligence on the enemy. There were a few other incidents, mostly unsubstantiated. If I was ordered to torture I would have said no, and I would not have lost my job or suffered for it. On the contrary, torturing is what gets you in trouble. EVERY SINGLE ONE of the Abu Gharaib defendants tried to claim they were told to torture, and that defense failed every single time. Everyone knows its wrong, and every one in the military knows that you can be prosecuted for obeying an explicity illegal order.

In one incident, my unit (the 1/1 Cavalry squadron) had an interrogation team attached to us. One of their interpreters hit a prisoner on one occasion. He was fired immediately (although he was hired by another unit later). I am not joking. That is the military that I belong to, and the one I served under in Iraq.

What never gets heard is the 99% of us who never abused prisoners. But everyone assumes that the other 1% represents the entire military as a whole, all at Rumsfeld or Bush’s direction. For a comparison of how ludicrious that is, just read your hometown newspaper of any major city for a week. It will be rare for you to not find one reported incident of police abuse or brutality. Does that mean that all police are bad? Does that mean the attorney general offically condones torture? Why don’t we hear the same amount of media hype in these cases?

The problem is that people are deliberately demonizing the military for political purposes relating to the war. If you think the war is wrong, then you should be able to demonstrate that without having to resort to hype and sweeping generalizations.