I will do my homework for now on…

Respect

One of two things must have occurred here: You either haven’t read FM 2-22.3 yourself Mr. Kaye and wrote this article off the information you received from your trusted sources, or you actually read it and decided to print a bunch of lies anyway just to further your own selfish ideologies. Which one is it Jeff? If it was the first one then let me be the first to tell you that your sources are bad and don’t have a clue what they are talking about. If it’s the latter, then what makes you any different in your deceit to the public than your conspiracy theories of our government’s deceit?

Let me set the record straight as a 21-year Army veteran Interrogator who has served our nation proudly all the way back to cold war days. No where in any FM that the Army has ever had on Interrogation operations has torture been advocated. No where in the current FM is there a technique that is built to be able to infer to torture. Here is a dissection of the false comments that you make in order to sway public opinion your way.

(1) You keep mentioning Appendix M interrogations and their torturous nature. What is an Appendix M interrogation? Well, for your information, it doesn’t exist. There is only one Restricted Interrogation Technique in Appendix M and it is called Separation. All that Separation means is taking a detainee and putting them in a cell alone. The only two justifications for this is to prevent the detainee from building cover stories with the other detainees that they were caught with and to prevent the detainee from gathering/learning resistance techniques from other detainees in general population before being interrogated. No where in the FM does it state any other purpose is authorized. Some may argue that the removal from social interaction inherent to Separation carries with it psychological risks which can be construed as torture, but that could only be said by conspiracy theorists such as you since you are so blinded by your own hate/paranoia that you couldn’t see the truth if it were standing right in front of you. All I can say to you and your “followers” is that if you want to keep defining Separation as torture even though Separation can only be authorized for a maximum of 30 days at a time, then you should first be challenging our own penal system that locks up U.S. persons in solitary confinement for the rest of their lives. And by the way, each detainee in Separation actually gets daily social interaction, just not with their own kind for obvious reasons mentioned earlier. As for Appendix M interrogations, the Separation is a condition that occurs on the custodial side of the house where as all interrogations occur on the intelligence side. The interrogation itself is completely separate from the Separation, hence there is no such thing as an Appendix M interrogation.

(2) You mentioned that “Fear up” approaches have been strengthened and the exploitation of phobias allowed in the new FM. Another deceitful statement. First of all, the Fear up approach was downgraded since we used to have two levels of Fear Up, a “fear-up harsh” which utilized yelling at times, and a “fear-up mild”. In FM 2-22.3 there is only one now that is referred to as an Emotional Fear-up and it specifically states that the use of a calm controlled demeanor should be used. You use the phrase “exploitation of phobias” and that is just not true. Here is what the FM says:

“Fear is another dominant emotion that can be exploited by the HUMINT collector. In the fear-up approach, the HUMINT collector identifies a preexisting fear or creates a fear within the source. He then links the elimination or reduction of the fear to cooperation on the part of the source. The HUMINT collector must be extremely careful that he does not threaten or coerce a source.”

People like you will read the statement above and think of things like exploitation of phobias and other coercive minded usages even after reading the last statement about not threatening or coercing the source. Any attempt to capitalize on a phobia would probably evolve to coercion such as when guard dogs were used at Abu Ghrayib. This was and still is a stupid action as coercion is most importantly against our interrogation policies, but also diminishes the probability of accurate information which in a tactical environment we cannot afford to have occur. Might the use of this Approach technique make a detainee cry? Of course it can. Are you saying that making a detainee release their emotions by saying something to them and making them cry is torture? Then you better look in the mirror and figure out how many times you have “tortured” others in your life by making them cry before you judge us when we might make an enemy of the United States of America shed a few tears. I know I shed a few tears the last time I deployed to Iraq when I saw the pictures of my only daughter walking down the ailse and I wasn’t there to give her away. Was I tortured then by my wife who sent me the pictures? No, of course I wasn’t and neither are the detainees if they happen to cry. It’s war and if you haven’t experienced it then I don’t recommend it as it can be quite overwhelming at times.

(3) You make the statement “The ban against drugs that cause serious derangement of the senses or temporary psychosis is replaced by a ban against drugs that cause “permanent damage.” Stress positions are, notably, not explicitly banned.” Here is what the FM really says:

“The psychological techniques and principles in this manual should neither be confused with, nor construed to be synonymous with, unauthorized techniques such as brainwashing, physical or mental torture, including drugs that may induce lasting or permanent mental alteration or damage. Physical or mental torture and coercion revolve around eliminating the source’s free will, and are expressly prohibited by GWS, Article 13; GPW, Articles 13 and 17; and GC, Articles 31 and 32.”

Your conspiracy is that since the word “temporary” was replaced with the word “permanent” that this must mean a change in super secret drug interrogation protocol. As the guys on ESPN Game Day say, “Come on man!” Are you serious? Are you really this short sided and paranoid? The Army doesn’t use any kind of drugs for interrogation. Don’t get the U. S. Army and the CIA mixed up because we are two different entities. But I can only infer that is who you are referring two though I personally have never witnessed an interrogation by them so I can’t accurately comment. You just want to throw us all together as the big bad Government in the sky that is all about doing evil things in order to suppress our society and take control of others. You need help my fellow American.

As for Stress Positions, they are not in the new FM because of the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005. Read on and I will answer this one later.

(4) You state “A behavioral science consultant (most likely a psychologist) and other medical personnel are part of a “multidisciplinary team” that monitors the Appendix M interrogation. The use of such medical and psychological personnel has been heavily criticized by ethicists from those professions, and by professional organizations, such as Psychologists for Social Responsibility, as the need for medical-behavioral monitoring is linked to the presence of abuse. In addition, psychologists in particular have been implicated in helping plan the interrogation themselves, particularly in ferreting out the prisoner’s psychological weaknesses and fears.

This team’s actual job is the safety of the detainee. It has nothing to do with the interrogation side of the house. Since the detainee is alone in a cell, the Behavioral Science Consultant monitors the detainee to make sure that they are not having psychological ill effects from the Separation. The medical staff ensures the detainees health because once we capture an enemy combatant, they become our responsibility. No matter where the detainee is, there is always a medical staff that is close by in case the detainee needs medical attention. This oversight far outweighs anything we provide to prisoners in solitary confinement in our own U.S. prisons. Again the paranoia that there must be link to the presence of abuse is made by you Mr. Kaye and people like you that do not want to know the real truth, only what fits your agenda. Their entire existence revolves around the care and safety of the detainee and you defame their service by making accusations to the contrary.

I can finally give you credit for one thing you mention, although I won’t put it in the same warped light as you. Of course you know about this and by your writing it is quite obvious which side you are on. As for the psychologists such as yourself , yes there has been and still is a big conflict of interest between professionals in your Psychology circles about the ethics code and whether their involvement is justified or not. Some such as yourself believe that your involvement is in direction conflict with your ethics, while others feel that their ethical duty is to support our nation in the Global War on Terrorism. I’m not a psychologist so I cannot and will not debate your ethics but I can thank every Behavioral Science Consultant I have had the pleasure to meet for stepping up to the plate and helping the cause. Since it’s obvious that your sources of information are tainted and you know nothing of true U.S. Army interrogation operations, what we teach, how we operate, I wish I could ask you to afford me the same professional courtesy and not provide your opinions as warped fact on matters you know nothing about such as my profession. But I know that won’t happen.

Final thoughts on your rhetoric. You continually attempt to use statements from other articles written by other journalists who are too busy hugging the tree in front of them to see past the bark into the rings of the tree where the real story lies. Their words hold just as little of merit as yours because they were just as ill informed as you were when they wrote their articles as you were when you wrote yours. There is no conspiracy that lies within FM 2-22.3 to mitigate or eradicate specific verbiage in order to commit acts of torture behind everyone’s back. The fact is that Public Law 109-163 title XIV, better known as the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, specifically states that “No person in the custody or under the effective control of the Department of Defense or under detention in a Department of Defense facility shall be subject to any treatment or technique of interrogation not authorized by and listed in the United States Army Field Manual on Intelligence Interrogation.”

Since it seems that you have a hard time understanding the way some things are written I’ll simplify what this means. If it ain’t in the manual then it can’t be used. Got it? Since the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 came out before the final version of FM 2-22.3, there was no need to add a bunch of superfluous language into the new FM about what is not authorized since Title XIV dictated into law that nothing outside the Army interrogation FM is authorized to use anymore. That includes Stress Positions.

And for the record, the U.S. Army does not advocate physical contact period! That is abuse and they do not stand for it! Did it happen in OIF 1. Yes it did. But it shouldn’t have happened. This is where the evil in some influenced the evils in others to come out. We all have evil in us; you, me, everyone. We have all thought of doing something to someone who has emotionally scarred us in our past. The vast majorities of us have the moral turpitude to recognize that those thoughts are wrong, not act on the temptation to commit the evil, and allow the temptation to subside. Some just don’t have that ability or temporarily lose that ability due to a traumatic situation. War is traumatic and at Abu Ghrayib it brought out the worst in them. No excuses though. What they did was sick and downright wrong. But check your statistics if you even have any Mr. Kaye and see how many of the abuse cases actually involved interrogators. You won’t find too many because the majority of the cases involved the detention guards. So why all the rhetoric about interrogation? A detainee spends maybe a few hours in any given day in an interrogation, meaning that they spend the remaining 22 hours of the day on the detention side of the house with the guards that were responsible for over 90% of all abuse in Iraq. See past the bark my friend. The rings of the tree will show you the way.

People of this great nation, if by chance you are reading this crap like I did, you can Google FM 2-22.3 and read it for yourselves. Stop allowing wannabe journalists such as Mr. Kaye here influence your perception of reality through their own selfish agenda. Read the FM for yourself and draw your own conclusions. Specifically read Chapter 8 and Appendix M which is the bulk of what Mr. Kaye attempts to discredit with this article. There are no hidden agendas in the FM. I may be retired now but I am proud of the service I provided to my country. I have interrogated hundreds of prisoners in my career and not once did I treat them outside the lines of the Geneva Conventions even when others said that the Geneva Conventions didn’t apply. There will be a book being published soon called “The fight for the high ground” which covers the exploits of interrogation operations in OIF 1 before Abu Ghrayib happened. Finally a book that talks about how the majority of us did what was right. Find it. Read it. See what really happened. And for you paranoid conspiracy theorists, no, it’s not written by me so stop right there.

And to you Mr Kaye, if you were just ill informed and this wakes you up to reality on this subject then I apologize for any ill pitches towards you and I welcome you to the other side with open arms. If you really are as paranoid as you write and truly hate our government that much that you hallucinate between every line then I can only ask you to please find another country to live in (maybe France. Paris though, not Normandy. They still remember) and make room for another immigrant to come and try and find their American dream. God bless America and our military that protects her!

This post was mentioned on Twitter by ThePublicRecord: Under Auspices of the Army Field Manual, Ongoing Torture Interrogations Continue at Guantanamo http://bit.ly/7V0vEV…