Redstate

I'm speaking from a shallow knowledge base here, as my experience is in signals and imagery intelligence. I was never a CI or HUMINT specialist. FYI

Anyhoo...Petraeus is on solid ground in asserting that military interrogators (i.e., those closest to the ground forces) should avoid coercive techniques. I've read plenty of antecdotal evidence that prisoners will say whatever is necessary to make the coercion stop. And, as S.G.E.W. points out below, if coercing a prisoner makes everyone in his family and neighborhood hate your guts, the costs of that coercion most likely outweigh the benefits of any information it elicited.

Also, let's not forget that GEN Petraeus has the authority to put his command at risk. I.e., he can decide--as he apparently has, in this letter--that he's willing to risk more deaths and injuries to his soldiers by eschewing coercive procedures. Deaths and injuries that might have been presented if a rough interrogation actually did elicit useful. life-saving intelligence. GEN Petraeus has apparently done the cost/benefit analysis S.G.E.W. alludes to and concluded that, if the cost of a no-coercion policy is a few more residents at Walter Reed, Bethesda, Brooke Army Medical Center and, yes, Arlington, then in the long run it's worth it.

Petraeus' job is to make decisions like that, constantly. And we expect him to do that, and we accept that he does that. We've put him in command of our fighting forces overseas. Also, we expect our soldiers in harms' way to deal with elevated risk levels.

But, do we expect President Bush to accept that same level of risk for us back home? We'd better, if we want our intelligence/law enforcement agencies to eschew coercive techniques at ALL levels. Are we willing to accept a heightened risk that the next Fort Dix Six will get through? Are we OK with an elevated level of risk for the people on a New York subway, or the Girl Scouts selling cookies at the local mall? I doubt we've thought that through as a people.

"Who will stand/On either hand/And guard this bridge with me?" (Macaulay)

In distinction from "Smagar" advocating a cost/benefit analysis instead of a moral calculus, I think our nation ought to practice what it preaches: "justice and liberty for all."

After all, on a "cost/benefit analysis," who knows what otherwise vile things might be effective?

And if we're willing to get into the gutter because it's effective, then tell me again just why should we prevail. Is it merely about keeping power, rather than a better society?

Think carefully.
--
Gone 2500 years, still not PC.

would not be possible under Islamic rule.

It is about maintaining power. Once power is lost, then "liberty and justice for all" is moot.

Gen. Petraeus seems to be saying that, even if torture or "coercive interrogation" DOES work occasionally (the opposite of "frequently") the benefits the military might receive from it (e.g. imminent attack, possible bad-guy location, etc.) are out-weighed by the costs the troops might incur from the use of such tactics (i.e. more folks on the street willing to take a shot at them, because the U.S. "coercively interrogated" their family member or best friend). If you treat a detainee with dignity, you might miss out on some little piece of actionable intel (an unknown value: there is no way to measure it). If you torture an innocent man, you've guaranteed that he and his family (and probably his entire neighborhood) will hate your country and your fellow soldiers until the day they die.

Cost/Benefit analysis. I'm willing to accede to the General's calculation.

differently, if they're dealing with a hard-core professional jihadhi (e.g., KSM). You know, the kind of person who took Suleiman Abu Gheith seriously, when he said that it's OK for Al Qaeda to kill two million American children . We shouldn't confuse these two very different situations.

"Who will stand/On either hand/And guard this bridge with me?" (Macaulay)

The instances in which torture is both necessary and beneficial are so rare that we may as well say we won't ever do it.

But if I see a guy set the timer on a nuke, and it's ticking down from 30 minutes, I'm going to use some creativity in assigning the topics he's going to discuss.
--
Gone 2500 years, still not PC.

And say defer to the actual interrogators. Of course, this means I may very well get 1st hand experience with current interrogation techniques in a month or so when my wife comes home from training. :)

"It's a book about a man who doesn't know he's about to die, and then dies...
...But if the man does know he's going to die and dies anyway. Dies, dies willing, knowing he can stop it, then...
Well, isn't that the type of man you want to keep alive?"
Karen Eiffel, Stranger Than Fiction

I *believe* it is false that he gave up critical info after being water boarded. I think the interrogators found the standard make friends with them, reward them for info type interrogation that the FBI espouses to be most effective. I don't have sources handy, but it might be worth further investigation if you're interested.
-Matt

Interrogators. It amounts to a really tough sales pitch with a hostile customer. Threats and promises are both equally against policy.

"It's a book about a man who doesn't know he's about to die, and then dies...
...But if the man does know he's going to die and dies anyway. Dies, dies willing, knowing he can stop it, then...
Well, isn't that the type of man you want to keep alive?"
Karen Eiffel, Stranger Than Fiction

we see professional dipsticks all the time. We don't have patience for amateurs.

"A man can never have too much red wine, too many books, or too much ammunition." -- Rudyard Kipling

Gamecock DeVine
The Charlotte Observer
www.race42008.com
www.hinzsightreport.com
"One man with courage makes a majority" - Andrew Jackson

and what better place to start than with your mentor, John Dean.
The same Dean who collected the purloined Watergate files, who turned on the Nixon administration to save his own skin, who was convicted of obstruction of justice, and whose wife Maureen was a roommate of a madame, just exquisite moral credentials.

And I'm sure you just hated to admit Dean was right, putting aside his own deformed nature and morals.

"Boy,[and gee whiz] talk about moral relativism".

Your preening over torture is worth a separate post but I'm not sure I want to expend the effort given your weak first shot. But if you can face up to it, I'm not optimistic, you may begin to wonder about the morals of people who are never outraged about islamic mass murders and torture so much as they are about an ill defined, broad based set of allegations against a Republican president.

And do ask yourself where the Democratic moral leaders where from 1992 to 2000 or where they are now as they go back on every promise of reform.

Take a bath and start reading better books.

"a man's admiration for absolute government is proportinate to the contempt he feels for those around him". Tocqueville

ought to get this one shown the door. We hardly tolerate even the mildest profanity, and this one shows up with a handle that is slang for female genitalia?

In Vino Veritas

-----------
We are all heroes, you and Boo and I. Hamsters and rangers everywhere, rejoice!

Nice and concise and to the point.

You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.

It's quite predictable that the same people, who squirm at the thought of getting their hands dirty, will appeal for help from those they now criticize when the going gets tough.

Even Alan Dershowitz called for a process by which the government could obtain a "torture warrent," which we could use to get badly needed information. We should have torture as an option, even if rarely used. But it should be controlled and only used when authorized. If it used in an unauthorized capacity, the person doing the torture should be prosecuted. But we shouldn't place into law a vague prohibition on torture without defining exactly what is being prohibited.

McCain is always trying to have it both ways. He says he's against torture. But then he tells Newsweek magazine, that, under certain circumstances, "You do what you have to do." That's elevating dishonesty to a new level.

Count me as someone willing to do anything possible to prevent McCain from becoming president, including voting for a Democrat.

Fake Republicans like McCain are much, much worse than Democrats.

The Left thinks that the "axis of evil" is Wal-Mart, Haliburton and Enron.

McCain made one exception to his opposition of torture, and it had to do with an immediate threat of an attack. If we know that a fella has knowledge of a suitcase nuke or other big or catastrophic strike, waterboard away. This isn't "having it both ways", it's a legitimate position on the subject, and one in which I agree with.

I think Gen. Petraeus is talking about how people will make false confessions under duress just for their own relief. It's also bad publicity. I'm sure we learned that in practice.

lesterblog.blogspot.com

"It's a book about a man who doesn't know he's about to die, and then dies...
...But if the man does know he's going to die and dies anyway. Dies, dies willing, knowing he can stop it, then...
Well, isn't that the type of man you want to keep alive?"
Karen Eiffel, Stranger That Fiction

so that's as much a reason not to torture as practical experience.

I'm sure the insurgents have their own levels of "need to know" that would make some suspects a dead end for more useful information, no matter what we do to them. There's also the Muslim concept of taqiya that can further complicate information extraction.

Now, sometimes it does work, and we're not above allowing foreign allies to use methods they find acceptable under their own laws and on their own territory if it leads to something useful. It's just that we know it's not a sure thing and definitely not an argument that the end justifies the means in every case.

lesterblog.blogspot.com

But there are just those times when you have to choose between evils.
Of course, now that the Iraqi Army is standing up, we shouldn't be taking any prisoners whatsoever. The Iraqis should. And they should interrogate them using whatever means they can live with...

"It's a book about a man who doesn't know he's about to die, and then dies...
...But if the man does know he's going to die and dies anyway. Dies, dies willing, knowing he can stop it, then...
Well, isn't that the type of man you want to keep alive?"
Karen Eiffel, Stranger That Fiction

the immediate regret felt by Abu Ghraib inmates once we handed it back over to Iraqi control. Maybe after a few more handovers like that, no insurgent will ever want to risk capture.

lesterblog.blogspot.com

at least in current parlance and the media. I am positive that when in the Army I saw and knew of methods that would be called torture under todays politicized, inflamed rubric.

Stress is included under this broad heading and the late Susan Sontag cited the practice of required standing with your arms outstretched, hardly the rack or the bastinado.

The roaring and the wails over treatment at Gitmo give the phony, self serving game away. Short of having their personal chef and a few women available for beatings the prisoners, as prisoners, couldn't have it much better.

Deliberately ignored by the poseurs and leftist exhibitionists are the consequences of poor and limited intelligence, the unbearable flip side of the coin. If you can keep the scales empty on one side, stay blind either to lives saved or enemies defeated, there is no moral equation, no dilemma to confront, just an open highway to the goals of leftist euphoria, rage and self deceptive flattery.

As humans todays liberals[?] are the bottom of the barrel, if they make it that far.

"a man's admiration for absolute government is proportinate to the contempt he feels for those around him". Tocqueville

by playing Twisted Sister at deafening volumes while he was holed up in the embassy house. Your point is correct.

lesterblog.blogspot.com

"Stress is included under this broad heading and the late Susan Sontag cited the practice of required standing with your arms outstretched, hardly the rack or the bastinado."

A favorite of the NKVD and KGB -- try doing that for 24 hours straight. See Robert Conquest:

"A central characteristic, seldom actually omitted from nonjudgmental accounts of Stalinism, was indeed torture. It was applied on a huge scale to produce a totally false picture of terrorism, sabotage, and espionage.

"Even the ostensibly nonphysical methods used in 1936 are described by victims as both mentally and physically devastating. One man arrested briefly told me that the comparatively mild-sounding stoika, when a prisoner was kept standing against a wall for days, was hardly bearable. Torture is, one might say, a worse crime against humanity than killing."

Forget torture- what about what we did with Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and firebombing Dresden and Tokyo (which was more deadly than the A-Bombing). Were we evil monsters for killing hundreds of thousands of civilians? If we weren't then I hardly see how holding Khalid Shiek Mohammad's head underwater for a few minutes or interagating somebody with a pair of women's panties on their head is a worse abomination than the civilians that were deliberately killed by liberal heroes FDR and Truman in world war two. We did what we had to do to win- it wasn't pretty, but we will do what we have to do to win this war as well, and I would support things far worse than torture if that is what it ultimately takes.

If we want to have a discussion about moral relativism that is where we should start- the "atrocities" we committed in order to win world war two.