Former interrogator slams torture: Torture has cost nearly as many lives as 9/11

Think Progress
Monday, Dec 01, 2008

In a Washington Post op-ed today, a former Special Operations interrogator who worked in Iraq in 2006 sharply criticizes American torture techniques as ineffective and dangerous. “Torture and abuse cost American lives,” he writes:

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. … 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. The number of U.S. soldiers who have died because of our torture policy will never be definitively known, but it is fair to say that it is close to the number of lives lost on Sept. 11, 2001. How anyone can say that torture keeps Americans safe is beyond me — unless you don’t count American soldiers as Americans.

The writer, who used a pseudonym for the article, adds that when he switched his team’s techniques to a rapport-building method, they found enormous success. One detainee told the author, “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.”

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6 Responses to “Former interrogator slams torture: Torture has cost nearly as many lives as 9/11”

1. Dyne Says:
   December 1st, 2008 at 9:56 am

   It doesn’t take a genius to realize that torture doesn’t work, period. They’ll say anything, almost always false, just for the sake of saying something to get it to stop.

2. Mister Jimmy Says:
   December 1st, 2008 at 2:14 pm

   Instead they plan to bring them here and force them to listen to rap music and canned speeches by Dick Cheney and Ziggy Breshenski. They’ll put them on a steady diet of Twinkies and Pepsi and make them watch daytime television and Fox news. Under these conditions, soon the prisoners will be begging to talk.

3. Steve Williams Says:
   December 1st, 2008 at 2:51 pm

   Torture is evilness. Period. It’s sadism. Period. It’s the line that if you cross over it, you can’t cross back as you have permanently forfeited your personhood.

4. johnathan Douglas Says:
   December 1st, 2008 at 5:10 pm

   http://intwain.wordpress.com/2.....servative/

5. Chris Says:
   December 1st, 2008 at 10:04 pm

   Torture undoes our humanity. It not only hurts the victim but those who commit it as well – each in a different way. Torture is morally wrong, it doesn’t work because people will lie to get out of it. And it also endangers innocent people who are wrongfully suspected of whatever as well.

   Additionally, it sets a bad example for the world to follow.

6. mathias Says:
   December 10th, 2008 at 4:42 pm

   Why call it Al Qaida ? Call it The Iraqi Liberation Front