I don't post much here anymore, but I found this posted elsewhere from a retired military guy and I found it pretty credible. Fwiw, especially light of the Nick Berg decapitation this morning:
<<You guys might think this sounds nuts, but hear me out.
I was in the military. In fact, I spent 20 years in the US Air Force, and retired as a Master Sergeant. I spent most of that time as aircrew, flying on combat support missions. All aircrew are required to go through survival school. Part of that training is a mock POW camp. There, you are exposed to what you can expect to encounter if you are ever captured and taken prisoner by an enemy.
At the camp there are trainers who are other military members permanently assigned to the school. They are the camp guards, role playing the parts of the bad guys. They are given extensive training in what they can and cannot do, how far they can go, what's in bounds and what's out of bounds. In addition, there are always outside observers watching either in the room, through a two-way mirror, or via closed circuit TV cameras. These observers included medical personnel (doctors and psychologists) to help the trainers know if they thought someone was in real danger.
There are exactly seven (and only seven) interrogation techniques. Actual physical torture and physical abuse is only one of those, and in fact it is the least used and often the least effective. Beatings and pain are not a good way to break down someone's will to resist. Usually beatings just cause health problems and other complications for the prisoners, and make they harder to take care of in the long run.
As a civilian, you are probably familiar with the cops and robbers "good guy, bad guy" thing. That's another technique. The "bad guy" will come back in here and do all those bad things to you, and you don't want that, so talk to me... Once the guy starts to talk about little things the interrogator builds rapport and moves into the heavy duty stuff.
For the POW camp phase of the training, the students are given several pieces of information, and are told that the information is classified and sensitive. The students are instructed to protect that information. They turn you loose (you can try to escape and evade, but eventually we all got captured) and you get thrown into the POW camp. Then, the instructors start the interrogations.
There are all kinds of things you can do to a person to break down their will to resist interrogation without actually physically hurting them. For example (and just for starters) there's sleep deprivation. How many of you have gone three or four days with no sleep at all. The prison guards at the camp don't let you sleep. They make you stand up all night, with loud horrible music blasting into the ward. If you lay down anyway, they take off your clothes and hose you down.
Anything that was "uncomfortable" was fair game. Wet, cold, hungry, tired, humiliated, etc. In one interrogation session, I had to sit on my knees, lean back as far as I could, while a screaming lunatic (a.k.a. role-playing interrogator) was in my face, yelling questions at me (between sips of cold coffee and munching on chewing tobacco). This boy could generate some spit and saliva (mostly coffee and tobacco juice) which he blasted into my face while he was screaming. Yeah, it made me want to just tell him what he wanted to know to make it stop ... but you didn't...
And that was the whole point. The training was to teach us how to endure, survive, resist, and return with honor.
There were different techniques for large groups. They would put bags on our heads so we could no see what was going on, then "beat" another prisoner in the room. The other prisoner "being beaten" was not actually a prisoner, he was another guard who was just making noises like he was suffering. The message was, "you're next" if you don't cooperate.
And, they would single out the females and "torture" them in front of the males, trying to elicit the protective male response. In other words, "I'll tell you what you want, just leave her alone..." was what they were looking for.
Are you claustrophobic? Being stuffed in a small space freak you out? Well, they would stuff us all in little boxes for a long time, just to see who would freak out. There is a certain percentage of the population that panics in small spaces. Figuring out who they are and using that simple fact against them is easy.
Afraid of heights? Let's all go to the roof. Again, relatively easy to identify and exploit.
Afraid of (fill in the blank)? Spiders, snakes, dogs, dentists? Whatever flips your switch, they'll find it, and try to use it against you.
In the pictures from the Iraqi prison, remember the one with the guy standing on the box with the wires attached to his fingers? He was told that if he fell off the box, he would be electrocuted. In reality, the wires were not attached to anything, and if he fell off, he would just hit the ground. They were trying to keep him awake, and reduce his ability to resist. They were exploiting his fear of being shocked.
The naked prisoners in a pile on the floor? There is nothing more repulsive than being forced into close physical contact when naked in that kind of a setting. Again, it was designed to be humiliating, but no one ever died from humiliation. The prisoners were again placed in a situation they would have rather avoided.
Naked with guard dogs growling and snapping at you? Scary as hell, right? Gonna talk now? (you bet...)
How about taking the prisoners, bagging their heads, putting them on a plane and flying them in circles for a few hours, then taking them back to the same facility, but to a different area (where they don't know the sounds and smells) and telling them you've taken them to another country (Israel)? A couple of guys walking around speaking Hebrew is all you need to pull that one off. Again, anything to make them think they're in deep doo-doo...
I guess what I'm saying is, "Been there, done that, got the T-shirt." Is it pretty? No, of course not. Yeah, the big, bad MP's made the Iraqi prisoners uncomfortable, wet, cold, hungry, and tired, all in an effort to get them to cooperate with interrogation and provide information that could potentially save the lives of US servicemen.
It's ugly, but it's reality. You can treat the Iraqi POWs like they were prisoners in a US jail, but the tradeoff will almost certainly be a higher death rate among your troops. You make the call, General... What do you want to do?
Now what's going to happen? A few Colonels will be punished, along with the people in the pictures. There will be hearings, interviews, and public outcry. Imagine what they would say if we burned a few, dragged their bodies through the streets, and hung their charred corpses from a bridge? Payback's a bitch? We're supposed to be better than that, right?
Those Iraqi prisoners would have been cold, scared, tired, and hungry, no doubt about that. I can only hope that some lives of US servicemen were saved in the process. If any of them were physically injured or killed then the criminals who did it should be punished. The commanders will be eventually punished for not having established firm rules, regulations, boundries of conduct, and effective oversight.>> |
