You can get the background in the description below. What caught my attention was his not wanting to talk to Evangelical pastors about his struggles because they were to easily co-opted. One of those things that make you think and reflect a big
THE MONK OF ABU GHRAIB
By Joshua Casteel, from emails he wrote while working as an interrogator at Abu Ghraib prison, in Iraq. In February 2005, he filed an application for conscientious- objector status, which was approved in May 2005. A collection of his emails, Letters from Abu Ghraib, was published in July by Essay Press.
JULY 3
Two big interrogations today, and they went very well. But more challenges with my work.
To put it vaguely, it’s the strategy games I have to play with the man across the table, mixing
and meshing shades of truth and lies to assess his responses and defense mechanisms. It’s all
such a dance: motives, methods, means, and then what you do with what you get, and how
much you trust those who then do what they do with what you give them. It can be paralyzing.
I’m going to see how much of this I can talk over with a Catholic chaplain. I don’t want to
go to the Evangelical pastors. Catholics are usually much more fervent and consistent in not
bowing blindly to the state. (They’ve kind of got their own polis in Rome.)
5 comments:
Nice deletion, proving my point. After viewing your posting this is a response from a friend who is a lt. colonel in the airforce. He served as Deputy Chief in strategy and plans for the air force at the pentagon.
I’ve got a really good friend who is an extremely devout Christian man who was an interrogator at Gitmo several years back. (Any military officer can be chosen to do this as special duty.) He has several kids and a wife that home-schools. Very evangelical, soft-spoken, goes out every week canvassing, wife and he teach Sunday school, never kissed until their wedding night. Doesn’t hammer anyone over the head about their strict interpretations but want to really really make sure they are in line with His will. He would talk about his experience there for one year. He spent several weeks in DC preparing for how to conduct interviews. He had run of the whole camp and was one of the senior guys there. He was very very frustrated with the way it was portrayed in the media. He would talk about how New York cops could do 10 times as much as they could (or would want to). Tactical interrogations (done in the field by untrained soldiers) trying to quickly get information about where the enemy was, were about what you’d expect from 18 year old kids. But once they got under control of someone more than a platoon leader, they were treated better than you could imagine. By the time you got to Gitmo, it’s just building confidence in the interviewer—never torture. One of the best and most productive means is to simply pretend to be on their side. Very effective. We do not torture. Never have. Never will. I find it galling that some ran campaigns this fall suggesting that THEY would not torture and would put a stop to it. The Geneva Conventions came about specifically to make sure that nations reduced the amount of state-sanctioned violence that was counterproductive to long-term prospects of peace. (Just think about how some people have a life-long hate of the Vietnamese because of all the horrifying things they did with bamboo and cages in the 2nd Indo-China War with the US.) Of course the fundamental requirement for protection under the Geneva Convention is that you are a uniformed soldier of a sovereign state. Al Qaeda are illegal combatants. They are thugs. Criminals. They are not sanctioned. They do not wear a uniform. They are not part of any sovereign state. They do not practice any of the laws of the Geneva Convention that limit the amount of violence in war and restrict unnecessary loss of innocent life. In fact, they target innocent life. Such atrocities get the attention they desire. Even if it were (and it is not) true that some engaged in sanctioned physical torture at lower echelon, it would be contrary to stated US policy, uniform code, military law, Service regulations, and officer general orders. Nonetheless in a court of law the accusations of war crimes (against Geneva Conventions) would be irrelevant because illegal combatants are not covered under Geneva Conventions, are not Prisoners of War, and would have forfeited their protection by their own war crimes in targeting civilians. As an example, it is illegal to bomb a hospital. It is also illegal to put a surface to air missile or AAA battery on or near any structure known as a hospital or any other structure displaying the red cross. However, if you put a SAM or AAA on a hospital roof, you then forfeit your Geneva Convention protection and it now becomes a valid military target. Bombing such a hospital would be legal. We still don’t do it! Didn’t do it when the Germans did it. Didn’t do it when the Koreans did it. Didn’t do it when the Vietnamese did it. Didn’t do it when Sadaam did it. In fact, when we discovered in the CAOC during Kosovo that an Islamist hideout that we were targeting had Christiana Amanpour in it, so we called off the strike with bombers inbound! They all got away because a reporter was doing an interview. Not protected by Geneva Convention and she shouldn’t have been there. We had every right, but still didn’t do it. We have rafts of military lawyers that are in nearly every phase of war planning, targeting and execution to make sure that we abide by all the legal rules of war. All personal are trained yearly in the Geneva Convention and the Law of Armed Conflict. We are the most restrictive, conscientious, cautious, and self-reflective professional military that has ever existed, and it is frustrating to constantly hear the accusations, misinformation, and frequent liable slurs that we endure from some segments of society. I normally just ignore it, but since you asked and are a friend…
The deletion was not due to content, but rather it seemed this blog had been spammed and someone was trying to sell stuff. Since the posting was anonymous and past such posts have been spam it was treated as such.
I wanted to respond to the comment by anonymous. The note from his Lt Colonel seems to fly in the face of availible evidence. The pictures from Abu Grahib, the revelations from those that have left the service, and the reports coming out of congress. Is the Colonel infering that those reports and findings are false. Or is trying to redefine what the world finds acceptable.
After saying that, I cannot imagine the pressure and mind-bending that combat does to people. But I don't believe that allows us to condone such actions.
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