Decline and Fall

I saw another documentary this week: Ghosts of Abu Ghraib. As a veteran of that place, I must say that the film-makers got a lot right, and I am glad their film came out. (Can I just interject a general thankfulness here for the fact that it's still OK to shine a critical spotlight on the government in this country? I can? Well gee, thanks!) Unfortunately, they got some things wrong too.

The most egregious example of missing the point has to do with their general theme of painting the Military Policemen in the photos as the poor little fall guys for a vast government conspiracy. Was there a vast government conspiracy to circumvent the Geneva Conventions and the Laws of War? Yes. Did Rumsfeld and others take proactive measures to blur the legal lines between acceptable military practices in interrogation and detainee abuse? Undeniably. Should the officers and administration officials be held responsible for their blatant violations of human rights? Absolutely. Were the likes of Charles Granger and Lynndie England hung out to dry in an effort to deflect criticism from the administration's close involvement in the circumvention of laws of war, the strict adherence to which America was once the examplar? Yes they were.

But that doesn't mean they were simply unwitting victims. They were allowed and encouraged to engage in despicable acts that have no basis in American policy. But as much as I am glad that they have been punished, the failure to punish those who ordered and condoned their behavior is unconscionable.

The administration's line that those photos were the result of a few bad apples who rejoiced in sadism was, like most lies, true to certain extent. Look at their smiles. There can be no denying the sadism of the people in those photos. The role that some unscrupulous interrogators played in that abuse is certainly significant. But to assert that the Army taught them to mimic electrocution and drag detainees nude from one end of the hall to another is a lie. I know this because I am a graduate of the Army Interrogator course and have taught interrogation at the Army Intelligence School, and I know from both first-hand experience and a thorough understanding of the relevant manuals that physical coercion has not been taught at least since 1992, when the version of the relevant Field Manual (34-52, since updated and re-numbered 2-22.3) that I learned from was published.

I remember well the admonitions of my instructors that physical coercion is both wrong and useless--we've all heard that people will say anything to get you to stop hurting them. The long-standing policy is that if a student violates the Geneva Conventions in the course of a practice interrogation in the schoolhouse, they fail the interrogation and are counseled. Too many counselings and they simply don't graduate, and are sent to an MOS where they won't have so much opportunity to break those particular laws. Interrogators are not merely not taught how to abuse detainees, they are discouraged in substantial ways at every turn from countenancing such behavior.

Unfortunately, there's no way for the schoolhouse to police the training in units once their students have graduated from the course. My guess, and I can't claim to know this for certain, is that the abuses recorded at Abu Ghraib, Bagram, Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere were the result of bad--nay, wicked--training by morally unconscious NCOs after their soldiers had already graduated, and in direct contradiction to standard practice. Well, that and the active encouragement by sinister people such as the former Defense Secretary to "remove the gloves." Those interrogators knew better, because they were not trained in the uses of physical coercion by the Army Intelligence School.

One of the other things I learned as a student-interrogator also bears on this question. We were often told that "everybody thinks they know how to interogate." I've seen this in action: I once stood and smiled as an officer with no interrogation training tried to instruct me in the way to "get to" a detainee. He assumed, as so many people do, that interrogation is all about making the detainee miserable. It is not. One of the most effective tools I have used was the befriending and advocacy of the detainee. As the one official who the detainee talked to on a regular basis, I was in the unique position of actually knowing this person as another human being. Emphasizing that connection is a powerful, effective and humane tool for the collection of information that can and does save lives and shorten wars. Donald Rumsfeld, John Yoo and General Miller are not graduates of the interrogation course, but they, as so many others, think they know how to do the job. They do not. So I wish there had been a bit more balance in the film's treatment of the policies that led to the behavior that we have all heard about.

Overall, Ghosts of Abu Ghraib got the story right. But the film-makers' zeal to indict those at the top of the chain of command and the military intelligence community obscures the fact that these practices are not part of military doctrine for interrogators. A simple interview with a representative of the Army Interrogation Course could have addressed this, but it wouldn't have fit into their grand narrative. This is unfortunate, because we were never taught to behave dishonorably, except when those who don't know what they are doing attempted to intervene.

Labels: GWOT, interrogation, torture