Meet Matthew Alexander.
That isn’t his real name…it’s a pseudonym he’s forced to adopt for reasons related to National Security and his own safety. He recently wrote a column for the Washington Post, and has been making the rounds in a series of interviews on various shows.
A little about Mr. Alexander: he’s served in the United States Air Force for 14 years. He started as a Special Operations pilot flying combat missions in places like Bosnia and Kosovo, later worked in counterintelligence, and eventually took a post as a senior interrogator in Iraq. He was a part of the team that would hunt, and eventually locate, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the mastermind behind many terrorist attacks and bombings.
Alexander was surprised to find that interrogations were being conducted in a manner consistent with Guantanamo Bay…using the U.S. Army Field manual as a guide…but loosely: “they were pushing in every way possible to bend the rules — and often break them. I don’t have to belabor the point; dozens of newspaper articles and books have been written about the misconduct that resulted. These interrogations were based on fear and control; they often resulted in torture and abuse.”
He prohibited his interrogation team from using these practices. Instead he chose a methodology “based on building rapport with suspects, showing cultural understanding and using good old-fashioned brainpower to tease out information. I personally conducted more than 300 interrogations, and I supervised more than 1,000. The methods my team used are not classified (they’re listed in the unclassified Field Manual), but the way we used them was, I like to think, unique. We got to know our enemies, we learned to negotiate with them, and we adapted criminal investigative techniques to our work (something that the Field Manual permits, under the concept of “ruses and trickery”). It worked. Our efforts started a chain of successes that ultimately led to Zarqawi.”
Sound familiar? It should. These are the ethical and completely LEGAL techniques utilized by the men and women of law enforcement in our country every day. Rapport building. Tricks. Manipulation. Anyone who has ever watched a few episodes of Law and Order has become very familiar with this method of interrogation…and its effectiveness. This method eventually did lead to al-Zarqawi, the same way it extracts confessions and evidence from criminals every year in America.
But Alexander had difficulty, even with a string of successes, in convincing other members of the Joint Task Force to turn away from torture and fear as tools. They argued that “hard cases” sometimes required more drastic measures. To this claim he responds: “We turned several hard cases, including some foreign fighters, by using our new techniques. A few of them never abandoned the jihadist cause but still gave up critical information. One actually told me, ‘I thought you would torture me, and when you didn’t, I decided that everything I was told about Americans was wrong. That’s why I decided to cooperate.‘”
And that’s where Alexander presents us with the heart of the matter:
1) Torture…is un-American. There’s a reason we don’t allow our law enforcement members to use it on OUR citizens. We claim to have a great respect for “human rights” and the “rule of law.” We claim that these things set us apart from other countries. They do…but only if we adhere to them completely and consistently.
2) Torture…costs lives. Studies have repeatedly shown that the evidence extracted under the duress of torture is HIGHLY unreliable. This unreliable evidence…causes us to fail to protect against attacks. It forces us to jump at ghosts based on bad intelligence, while the real threat continues unchecked. And…these abuses aid the recruitment efforts of the terrorist organizations, swelling their numbers to even more dangerous proportions. As Alexander put it: “I learned in Iraq that the No. 1 reason foreign fighters flocked there to fight were the abuses carried out at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Our policy of torture was directly and swiftly recruiting fighters for al-Qaeda in Iraq.”
There it is: “It’s no exaggeration to say that at least half of our losses and casualties in that country have come at the hands of foreigners who joined the fray because of our program of detainee abuse.” In short…the steps we are taking to prevent another “9/11-style terrorist attack” are probably going to lead to another “9/11-style terrorist attack.”
Alexander ran the transcript of his book past the Pentagon to ensure that he was not revealing any classified information…they proceeded to redact a large number of passages, many of which contained NO classified (just embarrassing) information. President-elect Obama has waffled on what, if anything, will be done to investigate the torture that was committed, and who within the current administration promoted it. It appears that both our military and civilian leadership is not listening, is not making us “more safe,” and at the same time our image is degraded abroad due to the violation of our own core principles and our violation of international conventions.
Recently, Americans worked together…donated their hard earned money…gave of their time…all to bring about some kind of change. But will it be enough? Will it take us back to the people we USED TO BE? The people that we now just PRETEND TO BE…