A Breach of Honor and Tradition

October 29, 2009  |  Posted by Matt Alexander

Researching the origins of the Army Field Manual on interrogations, I’ve learned from a military historian that it has included Geneva Conventions, Common Article 3, as the minimum standard for the treatment of detainees (Prisoners of War or other categories) since 1949, even years before the international accord was ratified by Congress.  In every version of the Army Field Manual since the Korean War, there have been prohibitions against the mistreatment of prisoners either through direct wording, adopted language from Geneva Conventions, and through the reminder that all soldiers are subject to the Uniformed Code of Military Justice (specific articles that relate to this discussion are Article 92 Failure to Obey a Lawful Order or Regulation, Article 93 Cruelty and Maltreatment, Article 97 Unlawful Detention, and Article 128 Assault, among others). 

At no time in our military history has the deliberate mistreatment of detainees been authorized, regardless of their classification status.  It is interesting to note that in the first Gulf War, after processing more than 78,000 prisoners of war, researchers could not find a single instance of detainee abuse.  Yet, we know from numerous sources that since 9/11 there have been thousands of cases of detainee torture and abuse.  And Guantanamo Bay represents the worst of it.

An FBI Inspector General Report in May 2008 found that FBI agents witnessed 173 instances of torture and abuse by interrogators at Guantanamo Bay.  Consider that FBI agents are only present for at most 3% of all interrogations, and you can conclude from this sample size the extent of the violations (in Iraq they witnessed 112 violations and in Afghanistan 58).  This report is one of our few resources for determining the extent of the torture and abuse because there has been no independent inquiry into the policy of torture and abuse, something that is certainly required if we want to avoid repeating it. 

The torture and abuse of detainees continues to be a significant aid to Taliban and Al Qaida recruitment.  Consider the experience of New York Times reporter David Rohde, who in 2008 was kidnapped by the Taliban in Afghanistan and held in Pakistan for more than seven months.  He said of his Taliban captors:

Some of their comments were factual.  They said…Muslim prisoners had been physically abused and sexually humiliated in Iraq. Scores of men had been detained in Cuba and Afghanistan for up to seven years without charges.

To Americans, these episodes were aberrations. To my captors, they were proof that the United States was a hypocritical and duplicitous power that flouted international law.

When I was a senior interrogator in Iraq monitoring interrogations, the torture and abuse of detainees was the number one reason foreign fighters cited for having come to Iraq to fight.

As a military veteran, one of the most disconcerting aspects of what happened at Guantanamo Bay is that it was run by the military.  This is not a CIA black site.  Unlawful orders authorizing the use of enhanced interrogation techniques, a euphemism for torture and abuse (or, as a minimum, inhumane treatment and violations of UCMJ), were issued and followed en masse.  By allowing this to happen, military leaders abandoned more than two hundred years of tradition, going back to General George Washington’s prohibition against the mistreatment of prisoners during the Revolutionary War.  Guantanamo Bay is a black stain on the U.S. military’s long and distinguished tradition of humanely treating detainees.  It represents a serious breach of our honor and tradition.

Closing Guantanamo Bay is one step we can take in restoring our military honor and tradition with respect to the treatment of detainees and it will help keep America safe by removing an effective source of Taliban and Al Qaida recruitment.  The time to close it is now, because the longer it stays open, the more we aid our enemy in this conflict. 

 

Author’s note: My criticisms in this article are in no way targeted at those military members who served honorably and acted lawfully at Guantanamo Bay.  Unfortunately, there are too few examples of military personnel refusing to follow unlawful orders and very few, if any, examples of senior military commanders refusing to allow the use of enhanced interrogation techniques. 

Matthew Alexander spent seventeen years in the Air Force and Air Force Reserves.  He is a former senior military interrogator and author of How to Break a Terrorist: The U.S. Interrogators Who Used Brains, Not Brutality, to Take Down the Deadliest Man in Iraq.  He led an elite interrogation team in Iraq that located Abu Musab Al Zarqawi, the former Al Qaida leader, who was killed in a subsequent airstrike.  He has conducted more than 300 interrogations and supervised more than 1,000.  He is currently a Fellow at the Open Society Institute.

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