[DRB]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15361458/

Speaking publicly for the first time, senior U.S. law enforcement investigators say they waged a long but futile battle inside the Pentagon to stop coercive and degrading treatment of detainees by intelligence interrogators at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Their account, confirmed by the Navy's former general counsel, outlines a fierce debate within the Defense Department over the competing goals of justice and security in the war on terror. President Bush has said repeatedly that the detentions at Guantanamo were intended not only to secure intelligence information to prevent al-Qaida attacks, but also to "bring to justice" the terrorists.

Very interesting article.

This is the thing that stuck out most to me.

In captured al-Qaida training handbooks, jihadists are told what to expect during interrogation. The U.S. will whip you, use dogs, give you water but not allow you to urinate, isolate you, insult your family. The handbooks say nothing of French fries.

"Some of them really became fond of some fast food French fries, and cheeseburgers," Fallon said, noting that the law enforcement agents made frequent visits to a McDonald’s on the U.S. base.

Surprise is an excellent tactic in all forms of conflict.

 

[DRB]

Part Dos

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15361462/

On Dec. 2, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld signed off, approving most of the tactics for use on al-Qahtani and others, including all of categories 1 and 2, but only one item in category 3: mild, non-injurious physical contact. Mock assassinations and water-boarding were out.

Rumsfeld added an asterisk, a note scrawled on the bottom of the approval memo, asking why stress positions were limited. "I stand for 8-10 hours a day," the secretary of defense wrote. "Why is standing limited to 4 hours?"

"You’re talking illegal acts here," Fallon said. "The secretary of defense can’t change the law. One of the things that we told all our personnel was the fact that during Nuremberg, Nazi war criminals were actually tried for acts that were perpetrated by them under orders of their superiors."

Gen. Miller was displeased, Col. Mallow recalls, saying, "You either are with us or you and your guys are out."

The general does not deny saying this. He said he inherited a situation where the two teams of interrogators "weren’t even speaking to one another, and it was unproductive," with two teams duplicating each other.

They turned back to the Navy for help. On Dec. 17, director Brant from the Naval Criminal Investigative service took the concerns to Alberto J. Mora, the chief lawyer for the Navy.

Mora, whose family had escaped Cuba under Castro, says the interrogation tactics shocked him, reminding him of the internment of Japanese citizens during World War II. While he worked on Pentagon lawyers, he recommended that the investigators take one more shot at persuading the leadership at Guantanamo. So Fallon, the cop, and Gelles, the psychologist, flew down to see Gen. Miller. They took along a Secret Service expert on threat assessment. In Miller's office, the three cops described the rapport-building approach, how it had worked in terrorism cases, the USS Cole bombing, the embassy bombings in East Africa, even in preventing assassination attempts. The general was unmoved.

"If you want to be on the team," Fallon and Gelles said Gen. Miller told them, "you’ve got to put on the same uniform." The general says that’s a fair description of his reply.[/QUOTE]

Mora, now the vice president and general counsel for international operations for Wal-Mart, found out about Rumsfeld’s reauthorization a year later, watching a congressional hearing on C-SPAN about Abu Ghraib.

"We may have stopped some abuse on the Department of Defense side," Mora said, "but it's clear we had no effect on the national policy, meaning the White House policy, to inflict cruelty on some individuals."

Although the Pentagon has looked at specific allegations made by FBI agents of abusive interrogations, no investigation has untangled how the policy of aggressive interrogation was set, or who influenced it.

"I frankly was rather surprised because General Miller gave me a hug," Fallon said. "It was the first hug that I received from General Miller.

"And he actually had told me that we were right."

That’s true, Miller says.

"To be frank with you," the general says, "I got down there and saw that the rapport-building was more effective. We made significant progress as we moved along. I found the law enforcement techniques to be an effective way to go about doing business.

"But not the only way."

 

[rockwool]

D, you know I love America and have full faith in that everything that is done by them is righteous, just and tolerant. What comes to my mind is if US servicemen expect the same kind of nice treatment they give enemy combatants, to be given back when they are captured by enemy forces?
I mean, they can't use that from movies well kown line "you can't do this to me, I'm an American" anymmore.

 

[DRB]

D, you know I love America and have full faith in that everything that is done by them is righteous, just and tolerant. What comes to my mind is if US servicemen expect the same kind of nice treatment they give enemy combatants, to be given back when they are captured by enemy forces?
I mean, they can't use that from movies well kown line "you can't do this to me, I'm an American" anymmore.

That's the dumbest thing ever. American servicemen that have been captured since World War II (and only by the Germans then) have never been treated to the requirments of the Geneva Convention. Not even close. So the fact of the matter is that this really has no affect on the level of treatment a captured American soldier expects in current conflicts.

Read the article and you'll see that the vast majority of the techniques being utilized are ones that have "reverse engineered" from treatment received by American servicemen in the loving embrace of their post WWII captives.