Former Abu Ghraib Commander Says She Met Israeli Interrogator in Iraq

I'm confused. If a prisoner objects to sleep deprivation and "stress positions", and refuses to cooperate, resisting passively (simply slumping rather than standing as directed, closing his eyes), what measures are taken against him? Is pain inflicted upon the prisoner, or not?

Discomfort is the name of the game. When you are a prisoner, you have no control over anything. Food, water, sleep, work, warm, cold, clean, dirty, your surroundings, entertainment, contact with others, etc. Every aspect of your existance is the subject of someone elses whim.

Try going to sleep in your cell when the guards are blasting a tape of tortured sounded moaning and screeching. You can slump over all you like, but you won't get to sleep until your body is exhausted.

When you're a prisoner, you do what you're told, or they go for your comforts. Sitting at your keyboard, it's hard to have an appreciation of having no comforts, but the world revolves around them.

Why get your daily 'shower' in freezing water instead of warm? Why settle for two and a half hours of sleep when you could get five? Why eat rice when you could get some dessert? Why sleep on the floor when you could get a cot? Why scrub septic tanks when I could watch a movie?

Why not just sit in the stress position and answer a few questions?

The idea is to make people cooperate. Without any ability to influence people's comfort, anyone can hold out against interrogation. If the only tools you have to work with is asking the question again, then the person is free to ignore you until you get tired of asking.

It's not about beating people, it's about wearing them down mentally and physically by making them uncomfortable. Without the ability to make people uncomfortable, they simply won't break, and you won't get any worthwhile intel. This is what is going on now that our interrogators have been defanged.

I don't know, it seems to me that if the worst you can do is take away comforts, it would be relatively easy to resist giving interrogators information.

I can sleep in pretty much any conditions, with any background noise, if I am tired and overdue for it. And I can stand freezing showers, lack of entertainment, and cold meals too. Although I have no idea whether I could resist actual torture (infliction of physical pain), I am certain that if all the enemy could do to me was what you describe, I'd never "break"; nor, I expect, would most combatants who had been well-trained.

I wouldn't even break under Abu Ghraib style "torture", which goes further than what you describe. Physical pain or threats to my family are the only things I'm not sure I could hold up under.

I don't know, it seems to me that if the worst you can do is take away comforts, it would be relatively easy to resist giving interrogators information.

I know it sounds easy. Just consider these things.

Most people, when their lives are transformed into a seemingly endless cycle of exhaustion, fear, and misery, will opt to break and accept the rewards. Most Americans don't know the understand exhaustion, fear and misery more severe than the cable going out, and think that they could shrug off most any discomfort while in enemy hands.

Right.

I've also known many people who have gone to Army SERE school with the attitude of 'screw em, I'm not tellin them jack'. They've all come back with their tails between their legs. All of them. The reality of being a prisoner, under the 24 hour supervision of trained, intelligent interrogators isn't something most people can adjust to, be they jihad hardened terrorist or fearless Green Beret.

The difference is we use harsher tactics at SERE school, i.e. in TRAINING, than we do in real life. No real terrorist is going to break under harsh language. No results can be expected with kid gloves.

There are some people that simply won't break. You may be one of them. Statistically, we can and have gotten the results we've wanted out of the majority that do break, with tools that are not brutal or violent.

I'm not an interrogator. I realize I can't accurately convey what they do, and I wouldn't if I could. I do work with interrogators, though, and I know they're smart people used to making do with less than most other countries, and still getting results. What's going on now, is that they have no tools, nothing.

There are some people that simply won't break. You may be one of them.

I'm not putting myself in any special category. I just find it hard to believe that a strong-willed, well-trained person would break under mere "discomfort". I am sure many of the Iraqi prisoners were neither strong-willed nor well-trained, and that the tactics U.S. interrogators used, which were not torture, obntained plenty of information.

In saying this, I am not arguing that the "discomfort" techniques are ineffective, nor am I arguing that we should legalize torture. I'm just pointing out the big gap between what we can immorally obtain (with real torture, inflicting physical pain) and what we can morally obtain (since the more important prisoners ought to be well-trained enough to resist interrogation that can't use torture).

Sorry for the delay to respond....hope you had a good 4th.

re: your closing points 1 & 2.

I re-read point 1 again, and understand your position.

as to 2:

2 - Many, many countries, on many, many different issues, agree to help us, in secret.

Of course, but it's important to keep a careful eye on those "helping us" relative to where each particular nation's self interests diverge with ours. Israel's agenda, goals, and timetables relative to America's WOT are very different...in some cases dangerously so for our fighting men and women, and often absolutely disasterous in terms of our long term ME plans.

2 - The mere presence of an Israeli interrogator doesn't mean anything more than he was there.

Again that's true, and it's also true that Israel is one of the few nations with a large pool of Arab language speaking people to utilize. But again, the question becomes which nation's agenda are these people working towards acheiving? That matters very much to me.

2 - Unless you are under the impression that the Israelis routinely put underwear on the heads of leashed prisoners, I don't see what the point of mentioning them would be, other than to muddy the waters.

You might like to read up on Israeli interrogation/torture techniques. I know I'm not the only person who when he first saw the photos thought "this is disturbingly Israeli". With their history of these types of techniques, one could hardly call it "muddying the waters" to mention it.

In closing I'll just say that I think it's of the utmost importance to pay attention to what each of our nation's are looking to achieve and that those who believe both nation's are woking from the same gameplan are foolish.

The most important question now (as I see it anyway), is whether Isreal wants to see a stablized post war Iraq....IMO, the answer is no they do not. IMO what it wants is an expanded American war accelerated according to their timetable, not ours.

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