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"Six months before the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison broke into public view, a small and fairly obscure private association of United States Marine
Corps members posted on its Web site a document on how to get enemy POWs to talk. The document described a situation very similar to the one the
United States faces in the insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan: a fanatical and implacable enemy, intense pressure to achieve quick results, a brutal
war in which the old rules no longer seem to apply.

"Marine Major Sherwood F. Moran, the report's author, noted that despite the complexities and difficulties of dealing with an enemy from such a hostile
and alien culture, some American interrogators consistently managed to extract useful information from prisoners. The successful interrogators all had
one thing in common in the way they approached their subjects. They were nice to them.

"Moran was writing in 1943, and he was describing his own, already legendary methods of interrogating Japanese prisoners of war. More than a half
century later his report remains something of a cult classic for military interrogators. The Marine Corps Interrogator Translator Teams Association, a
group of active-duty and retired Marine intelligence personnel, calls Moran's report one of the 'timeless documents' in the field and says it has long been
'a standard read' for insiders. An MCITTA member says the group decided to post Moran's report online in July of 2003, because 'many others wanted
to read it' and because the original document, in the Marine Corps archives, was in such poor shape that the photocopies in circulation were difficult to
decipher. He denies that current events had anything to do with either the decision to post the document or the increased interest in it."

http://home.comcast.net/~drmoran/home.htm

The successful interrogators all had one thing in common in the way they approached their subjects. They were nice to them.

I agree with this. There is tremendous truth in this.

In my remarks I am not arguing for torture, in fact the discussion about torture is a distraction from what I believe is the real agenda. Torture is already illegal under military law. Soldiers who commit torture are already sentenced to do serious time if they are caught, 5 or 10 or 20 years in prison. This is serious.

The problem isn't in making illegal conduct that is already illegal, and that we already agree is wrong and counterproductive. The problem is in subjecting soldiers and intel agents to civilian law for actions taken in a war-zone. The problem is in allowing civilian lawyers and courts to inject themselves into military discipline and classified information.

The men who committed abuses at Abu Graib are all doing hard time. Subjecting them to civilian trials was unnecessary, and would be to add OJ Dream Team theatrics to matters which have directly to do with military discipline. Imagine letting OJ's Dream Team going after classified intelligence, during a war, either to hang an intel agent, or to get him off.

Imagine having your military leadership dragged through courts in the middle of a war as multiple trials allow anti-war attorneys to harry and harrass the people trying to conduct the war. Imagine the marines who customarily used flamethrowers to clear japanese bunkers, and who often shot the wounded, being dragged through the courts when we did not yet know how the war would end.

Do you remember the soldier who was tried for shooting the "dead" Iraqi? Can you imagine the circus if he was convicted of murder in a civilian court? Can you imagine the effect on military morale if anti-war attorneys were able to drag men off the front lines to face civilian courts?

In a military trial, soldiers are judged by soldiers, based on military codes of conduct. That is as it should be.