This Dim Sun of York
Decline and Fall has more on Abu Ghraib, Abu Haydr and Byron York. Excerpt:
In my experience, Iraqi detainees were less afraid of Abu Ghraib because of those photos than they were afraid because of the spartan conditions, danger (it was one of the most frequently attacked places in Iraq and many of those attacks were targeted at the detainees themselves), disruption in their lives, uncertainty about their future, and the very real and widely-understood possibility that they would disappear down a bureaucratic black hole from which they might take years to escape. Abu Ghraib is a prison, and being in prison sucks, whether you’re being tortured for information or ignored altogether.
Comment by Robby K. —
April 12, 2007 @ 10:30 pm
Initially, I thought the post title was “This Dim Sum of York”. Who knew Edward IV liked Asian cuisine so much?
Comment by Eric the .5b —
April 13, 2007 @ 12:24 am
I…read the title the exact same way.
Comment by Dave W. —
April 13, 2007 @ 4:52 am
Actually, detainees were far more fearful of going to an Iraqi-run prison. They knew that the Iraqi Police and Army were only too willing to beat, electrocute, cut, twist, or otherwise harm their prisoners, and they had no desire to be subjected to that. Keeping them in American custody was often an incentive, given their alternatives.
If Decline and Fall knew this, then wouldn’t sending the detainees to an Iraqi prison amount to a war crime on the part of the US military personnel who participated in this kind of scheme? If not, why not? If so, should they be prosecuted?
I mean, I hate to think of Decline and Fall going to the brig for cluing us civilians know what the deal was, but it might send a good message, too.
PS: It scanned as “dim sum” for me too.
Comment by Tim R. —
April 13, 2007 @ 6:45 am
Mmm. Dim sum.
Comment by Dave W. —
April 13, 2007 @ 6:55 am
Recently, Mr. Henley did a post equating false executions with torture.
Also, even if these threats of transfer to Iraqi run prisons were never actually ever carried out, the mere threats still smack of false execution more than anything the Iranians did to the Brits recently. Does Decline and Fall’s interrogation method therefore amount to torture?
Comment by Jon H —
April 13, 2007 @ 10:14 am
“Initially, I thought the post title was “This Dim Sum of Yorkâ€. Who knew Edward IV liked Asian cuisine so much?”
Maybe it’s a Dim Sum joint that serves the rare dish, “General Tso hunchback”.
Comment by Decline and Fall —
April 13, 2007 @ 4:31 pm
No, I’m in no danger of going to the brig, fo rthe simple reason that we–American forces, that is–don’t condone the torture, intervene to stop it on occasion, and report every violation we come across. It’s a process with which I’m very familiar, alas.
The other thing is, Iraq has to be allowed to operate its own system of laws. America isn’t in the strictest technical sense an occupier, America’s just there to “help Iraqi democracy along” or something. I know that’s a bunch of crap, but the legal ramifications are important because we don’t actually, officially make the laws there. So we have no choice but to turn over a detainee to the local authorities if he’s a common criminal. (I remember pleading with one guy who was scared to death he’d be sent to an Iraqi prison to confess one thing, any thing, that he had done to Coalition Forces so I could classify him as a security threat and not a common criminal.)
I’ll clarify more later–my plane’s boarding.
Comment by Dave W. —
April 13, 2007 @ 8:12 pm
Good for you!
Comment by Dave W. —
April 14, 2007 @ 8:36 am
Further to last night’s intitial, flip response:
Your blog entry implied that the US military had discretion to turn over, or not turn over, some suspects to the local authorities who would torture (or maybe worse). That is what I was responding to here at highclearing. If there is no discretion, then why do suspects believe the US military questioners when they threaten to turn them over to local authorities? Don’t these suspects understand what you are telling me now, which is that a suspect must either be turned over or not, and that there is now discretion?
Frankly, I tend to believe what you implied over in your blog, which is that whether they are turned over depends upon whether they talk, rather than this “security threat” analysis you are now backpeddling into.
Second, if these are common criminals, and not security threats, then do not waste your time capturing them. Better to let a common criminal go free than to subject him or her to torture (or worse). You shouldn’t need me to point this out for you. America should not be about making torture happen, yet that is what you are confessing to here.
Comment by Dave W. —
April 14, 2007 @ 8:55 am
Oh, yeah, and I was kidding about you ending up in the brig. You will not be punished because you are on the Coalition side. Don’t kid yourself into thinking that that means your behavior was good, though.
Comment by Decline and Fall —
April 14, 2007 @ 2:00 pm
If there is no discretion, then why do suspects believe the US military questioners when they threaten to turn them over to local authorities? Don’t these suspects understand what you are telling me now, which is that a suspect must either be turned over or not, and that there is now discretion?
Well, we don’t threaten to turn them over. That’s illegal and I, for one, have been clear about that throughout my career. (I’m no longer in that business, btw.) The fact of the matter is that sometimes people get captured for civil offenses, sometimes they get captured for terrorism-related things, and sometimes the lines are blurry. You try figuring out how to write the Iraqi law in such a way that it’s always clear that a black market weapons dealer or a kidnapper is definitely only a civil criminal or a “threat to coalition forces.” Ultimately though, it’s Iraq’s country to run, and while we have some say in where a detainee goes, the Iraqis have a lot more. The interrogator is only there in an advisory role as far as disposition goes, and he is usually ignored anyway.
Frankly, I tend to believe what you implied over in your blog, which is that whether they are turned over depends upon whether they talk, rather than this “security threat†analysis you are now backpeddling into.
What you’re describing is retribution for a detainee not cooperating with an interrogator, which is expressly forbidden in international law. What tends to happen with people who don’t talk is we get the information from someone else and try to add an “obstruction of justice” charge to their files. Since I have never actually been involved with a prisoner’s case after I turned their file over to the Iraqi legal authorities, I have no idea whether this actually happens.
Second, if these are common criminals, and not security threats, then do not waste your time capturing them. Better to let a common criminal go free than to subject him or her to torture (or worse).
See my response regarding the confusion among offenses in a society that is also a battleground.
America should not be about making torture happen, yet that is what you are confessing to here.
I fail to see how I’ve said anything of the sort. The U.S. does not have the authority, ultimately, to tell the Iraqis they can’t have a prisoner. But even if we did, that decision would be made well above the head of the interrogator, and in almost every case without his input. We don’t carry a lot of weight–none of us are even commissioned officers, with the exception of the Warrant Officers who never interrogate anybody anyway.
Interrogation is not equal to torture, but that’s something most laymen don’t get. The skilled interrogator gets information by convincing a detainee, using various logical and emotional appeals, to give him information that is of intelligence value. Torture is not only morally wrong, it is ineffective and it produces bad intelligence. I think you have conflated the movie version of interrogation–pulling out fingernails, mock executions, etc.–with what interrogation actually is.
Comment by Dave W. —
April 14, 2007 @ 2:23 pm
Decline And Fall:
Thank you for taking the time to explain. I hope things are as you say they are over there. A friendly word of advice now. This line from your blog entry:
“Actually, detainees were far more fearful of going to an Iraqi-run prison. They knew that the Iraqi Police and Army were only too willing to beat, electrocute, cut, twist, or otherwise harm their prisoners, and they had no desire to be subjected to that. Keeping them in American custody was often an incentive, given their alternatives.”
You may want to modify or supplement the entry to better explain this passage, especially the part I italicized. Otherwise people are liable to misunderstand what you are saying there, in a way that reflects badly on Coalition Forces. The passage sounds different than how you have helpfully explained things here at highclearing.
Comment by Dave W. —
April 14, 2007 @ 2:38 pm
Also, for those interested in the issues Decline And Fall and I are discussing here, check out Mr. Henley’s 2004 blurb on the Arar case:
link
That is the newest reference I could find, so hopefully Mr. Henley or Ms. Mona are working on an update. Fascinating case. Doesn’t exactly bolster confidence in the protocols Decline And Fall is explicating for us on this thread. Here is the wiki for those who need to know now:
Arar wiki
Comment by Decline and Fall —
April 15, 2007 @ 3:21 pm
Good point, and thank you for the suggestion. The fact is that it’s very useful to tell the detainee that the interrogator has all the power and all the answers, but in actuality that’s not the case. It’s deceptive, sure, but war is hell and the people we’re trying to capture or kill are worse than liars.
As for the Arar case, well, what can I say? That wasn’t me. I know the law. I know that my colleagues know the law. But I don’t know the extent to which they follow the law. I can assure you that there are as many sick, stupid and morally dubious people in my (former) profession as in any teaching staff, legislature or council of bishops.
My motto over there was “no bit of intel is worth risking my ass over,” which is to say that I kept well within the law and my own moral sense because I wanted to both a) not go to jail, and b) sleep at night. And that’s what I told each and every one of the hundreds of students I taught.
Comment by Dave W. —
April 15, 2007 @ 6:57 pm
Well, I guess the problem with the Arar case isn’t so much that rendition and torture happened in the first place, as the fact that there is no admission of guilt and/or accountability now that it is pretty clear that the interrogators did bad.
At least bishops are forced to resign when they get caught doing something bad.
I am not sure whether you have called for any discipline over the Arar case in your blog, Decline and Fall, but since you have some experience in the relevant area, you may want to consider it. It carries more weight when an ex-military guy calls for discipline, and it is just plain the right thing to do. I don’t know how the ex-military community works. You might lose a few friends, economic opportunities and/or readers, but those small issues will be more than made up for by the satisfaction of doing the honorable thing vis-a-vis the Arar fiasco.
Comment by Jim Henley —
April 15, 2007 @ 7:47 pm
Near as I can tell, Maher Arar never passed through the hands of the US military. He was picked up at an American airport and handed off to Syria. Likely CIA people were involved in picking up the transcripts from the Syrian interrogators.
The US government is dirty as hell in the Arar case, but it doesn’t really have anything to do with American military detention policy. I absolutely grant that American military detention policy has a lot to answer for in the GWOT era, but the Arar case is tangential to that.
Comment by Dave W. —
April 15, 2007 @ 9:44 pm
The US government is dirty as hell in the Arar case, but it doesn’t really have anything to do with American military detention policy. I absolutely grant that American military detention policy has a lot to answer for in the GWOT era, but the Arar case is tangential to that.
The it should be really easy for Decline and Fall call for a few firings. I am hopeful. He seems like he has good integrity.
Comment by Jim Henley —
April 15, 2007 @ 10:05 pm
I don’t think much of your notion that you get to decide who needs to denounce whom on what schedule.
Comment by Decline and Fall —
April 16, 2007 @ 3:31 am
Well, I could call for firings, but I really am nobody in the grand scheme of things. You may have noted that I’m not exactly upfront about who I am… I have my reasons for that.
For the record, people should ALWAYS be held accountable for their actions, period. That should just about cover it.
Comment by Dave W. —
April 16, 2007 @ 6:54 am
I don’t think much of your notion that you get to decide who needs to denounce whom on what schedule.
Your objection is noted. I think Decline and Fall wants people to trust that the military is not doing what in effect are false executions, and is not telling Iraqis to talk or they will have the friendly Iraqis torture them. Convincing us civilians to trust in this matter requires credibility, especially after GWB’s lies.
I am just trying to persuade Decline and Fall of how best to get this credibility with a skeptic like me.
He is free to ignore my suggestion. You, Mr. Henley, are free to suggest something better. Frankly, your point about Decline and Fall being in a totally different branch of the service was not that convincing.
Turning over prisoners to people who will torture them is bad. Decline and Fall did that apparently. What is worse, he did that with people who were not security threats, but merely “common criminals.” Ergo, what Decline and Fall did was bad. I do not understand your ethics. It is almost like you are being friendly to Decline and Fall because he speaks English and fought for the US. I have a hard time with that kind of situational ethics, if that is what you are doing here, Mr. Henley. Please reconsider your position for me, if you could. Maybe I am the one who is analyzing Decline and Fall’s conduct in the wrong manner and you can help me see where I have made an error in judging him a bg.
respectfully yrs,
Dave W.
Comment by Decline and Fall —
April 16, 2007 @ 1:24 pm
Turning over prisoners to people who will torture them is bad. Decline and Fall did that apparently. What is worse, he did that with people who were not security threats, but merely “common criminals.â€
Yes, turning people over to people who will torture them is bad. Unfortunately, you can’t know that they will be tortured. The fact is, each and every Iraqi Police and Army unit has been trained on how to do their jobs in a humane manner. But, as someone who has conducted that training, I know that it often goes in one ear and out the other. Most of those units are overrun with partisans of one or another creed/ethnicity and those hatreds run very deep. Abuse reports are filed when we receive them, but there isn’t a lot that American JAGs, who have always acted honorably in my experience, can do to pursue investigations into Iraqi mistreatment. They don’t have the jurisdiction. It’s a terrible situation, but it is what it is. This is a country that has been abusing its prisoners for millennia and those are hard habits to break. And the “common criminals” are committing crimes such as holding weapons caches, providing material support for IEDs, extortion, aggravated assault, robbery, and other “crimes” that can also be classified as acts of war. Actually, most of the attacks on American and Iraqi forces are perpetrated by people who are in it for the money.
Compounding the abuse is the realization on the part of prison guards and soldiers that these detainees are the guys who have been killing their friends. A lot of the time the detained individual isn’t that guy, but there are many cases where it is, and they’re usually acting off of intelligence that tells them the person they’re arresting is a bad guy. As tragic as it is for so many reasons–moral, long-term strategy, hearts and minds–the fact remains that when you’ve just captured a guy who was responsible for the IED that just killed your friend or almost killed you, it’s hard to get them to remember that now that they’re in custody you have no right to hurt them. I’m not making excuses for it, I’m just trying to understand, and convey, why it happens. The logic that says “you were authorized to kill this person 30 seconds ago and now you’re not authorized to kick them” is lost on most people. It takes a certain level of intellectual detachment and big-picture thinking to see that, and that’s not the modus operandi of most foot soldiers.
Should the abusers, be they Iraqi or American or British or whatever, be punished for it? Yes. Will they? Probably not. That takes a soldier off the battlefield, which commanders don’t like very much. It’s certainly in the best interest of the American project over there (whatever that is anymore, frankly I’m at a loss to define it in anything but pie-in-the-sky terms) to crack down on it.
Comment by Decline and Fall —
April 16, 2007 @ 2:07 pm
Are you happy now, Dave?
Comment by Dave W. —
April 16, 2007 @ 3:12 pm
Are you happy now, Dave?
Yes. I agree with that post, and I find it both courageous and well put. thanks for saying what needed to be said here.