Officer cites abusive US interrogations in Iraq

[Barrett808]

Source: Associated Press

Officer cites abusive US interrogations in Iraq
By PAMELA HESS, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - The Iraqi prisoner had valuable intelligence, U.S. special forces believed, and they desperately wanted it. They demanded that expert American military trainers teach them the same types of abusive interrogation techniques that North Korea and Vietnamese forces once used against U.S. prisoners of war.

The trainers resisted, according to testimony prepared for a Senate hearing Thursday; the methods were intended to elicit confessions for propaganda use, rather gather intelligence. They were overruled and ordered to demonstrate on the prisoner in September 2003, early in the war.

The interrogation went ahead before a lead trainer stepped in and stopped it. He and his team were sent home shortly thereafter.

The written testimony of two military officers troubled by the use of unconventional interrogation techniques was obtained Wednesday by The Associated Press ahead of the Senate Armed Forces Committee hearing. According to the testimony, the military invaded Iraq and took control without expert interrogators or well-reasoned polices for dealing with prisoners, and was flailing for information however it could get it.

The hearing is the committee's second on the origins of the Pentagon's harsh interrogation program. The review fits into a broader picture of the government's handling of detainees, which includes FBI and CIA interrogations in secret prisons.

"In far too many cases, we simply erred in pressing interrogation and interrogators beyond the edge of the envelope; as a result, interrogation was no longer an intelligence collection method; rather, it had morphed into a form of punishment for those who wouldn't cooperate," Col. Steven Kleinman said in his prepared testimony... "When presented with the choice of getting smarter or getting tougher, we chose the latter," Kleinman stated.

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080925/ap_on_go_co/interrogation_treatment

[Solly Mack]

1. K&MR

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

2. Ya mean Shrub ain't fixed it yet?

:grr:

[LynnTheDem]

3. " abusive interrogation techniques"...gee, is that what we called it when it was

done to us by the VietCong and the N. Koreans???

I'm pretty sure we called it TORTURE.

Fuck the mealy-mouth crap and call it what it is, America.

[LynnTheDem]

4. "unconventional interrogation techniques " ...that;'s what the VietCong and N. Koreans used on us.

"cept we called it TORTURE.

God fucking forbid Americans face up to the fucking FACTS of what we now are, what we now do.