The great interrogation disaster (II): Off the tracks in Cuba and Iraq
Here is more from that terrific speech retired Army Col. Stuart Herrington gave on the disastrous recent history of American interrogation operations. The talk, given at Fort Leavenworth late last year, was sponsored by the CGSC Foundation, which plans to publish the speech in a book this spring about ethics and law in contemporary conflict. ...
Here is more from that terrific speech retired Army Col. Stuart Herrington gave on the disastrous recent history of American interrogation operations. The talk, given at Fort Leavenworth late last year, was sponsored by the CGSC Foundation, which plans to publish the speech in a book this spring about ethics and law in contemporary conflict. I am quoting from the speech with the CGSC Foundation's permission.
Here is more from that terrific speech retired Army Col. Stuart Herrington gave on the disastrous recent history of American interrogation operations. The talk, given at Fort Leavenworth late last year, was sponsored by the CGSC Foundation, which plans to publish the speech in a book this spring about ethics and law in contemporary conflict. I am quoting from the speech with the CGSC Foundation’s permission.
The U.S. military prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, was worse than a crime in his view, it was a blunder. "Guantanamo was the diametric opposite of how I would have set up a facility," said Herrington, a seasoned interrogator who advocates treating prisoners with respect and decency — not only because it is the right thing to do, but because it is the most effective way to gather intelligence.
"Iraq was worse," he continued. He arrived there in December 2003 on an official trip to review U.S. military intelligence operations in the new war there. He was shocked by what he found. "I reported, in writing, that the Special Operations Task Force was brutalizing detainees at their Camp Nama facility before turning them in to the Baghdad Airport confinement facility." He was surprised to have his warning disregarded:
"I expected a major investigation of rogue activity, but a feeble attempt to investigate was quickly dropped. Investigations into Camp Nama were unwelcome, because, we know now, the excesses that I and others reported were sanctioned at very high levels of the U.S. government . . . .
He also inspected the Abu Ghraib prison and reported that it was a disastrous mess, "a squandered and lost opportunity." So it was no surprise, he said, a few months later when the news of the abuses broke, with "the sheer depravity of mistreatment, [and] the idea that American soldiers would descend to such depths of conduct," that the global media seized on it.
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