The Osterley Times: Advisers Fault Harsh Methods in Interrogation

As Republican Presidential candidates fall over themselves promising to torture terrorist suspects, a group of experts advising the intelligence agencies have argued that harsh interrogation techniques are "outmoded, amateurish and unreliable."

The psychologists and other specialists, commissioned by the Intelligence Science Board, make the case that more than five years after the Sept. 11 attacks, the Bush administration has yet to create an elite corps of interrogators trained to glean secrets from terrorism suspects.

While billions are spent each year to upgrade satellites and other high-tech spy machinery, the experts say, interrogation methods — possibly the most important source of information on groups like Al Qaeda — are a hodgepodge that date from the 1950s, or are modeled on old Soviet practices.

Some of the study participants argue that interrogation should be restructured using lessons from many fields, including the tricks of veteran homicide detectives, the persuasive techniques of sophisticated marketing and models from American history.

It's long overdue that someone said it, not only is torture abhorrent from a moral point of view, but in terms of intelligence gathering it simply doesn't work. In this regard it is typical of much of the behaviour of the Bush administration since 9-11, acting tough to please a base who are insisting that "something must be done" whilst actually proving ineffective at tackling the root causes of terrorism.

Tony Blair stated several years ago that the prime recruiting agent for al-Qaeda was Israel's treatment of the Palestinians and that finding a just resolution to this conflict would do more than anything else to win the war on terror by draining the swamp that encourages young men to sign up to al-Qaeda's cause. And yet, Bush's record on the Israel-Palestine dispute is simply the worst of any President that I can think of. He has literally sat around for six years of inactivity. No peace talks. No dialogue. No activity of any meaningful kind.

Oh, occasionally Olmert has agreed to meet with Abbas, but never to discuss anything of any merit. Olmert has always been able to define the subject matter in advance, usually reducing it to useful talks like "Palestinian terrorism". The subject of the illegal occupation has always been firmly off the table.

And, as with tackling matters that might actually reduce terrorism, we find that the experts are lined up against Bush when it comes to how to glean useful information from terrorist subjects.

They have stated, quite baldly, that harsh interrogation techniques simply do not work.

“There’s an assumption that often passes for common sense that the more pain imposed on someone, the more likely they are to comply,” said Randy Borum, a psychologist at the University of South Florida who, like several of the study’s contributors, is a consultant for the Defense Department.

But some of the experts involved in the interrogation review, called “Educing Information,” say that during World War II, German and Japanese prisoners were effectively questioned without coercion.

“It far outclassed what we’ve done,” said Steven M. Kleinman, a former Air Force interrogator and trainer, who has studied the World War II program of interrogating Germans. The questioners at Fort Hunt, Va., “had graduate degrees in law and philosophy, spoke the language flawlessly,” and prepared for four to six hours for each hour of questioning, said Mr. Kleinman, who wrote two chapters for the December report.

Mr. Kleinman, who worked as an interrogator in Iraq in 2003, called the post-Sept. 11 efforts “amateurish” by comparison to the World War II program, with inexperienced interrogators who worked through interpreters and had little familiarity with the prisoners’ culture.

The experts are saying that powers of persuasion are much more useful than the use of force and also that Americans already have expertise in this field, an expertise that - until now - has mostly been used to sell people toothpaste, but which could be more usefully employed in persuading people to give up relevant information.

Robert F. Coulam, a research professor and attorney at Simmons College and a study participant, argued that the government had been using all it's energy to justify the use of force during interrogations rather than asking itself whether or not force resulted in better information being gleaned from subjects.

Mr. Kleinman, the former Air Force interrogator who took part in the “Educing Information” study, said the mistakes of the past five years “have made interrogation synonymous in many people’s minds with torture.” But he said the group wanted to redirect the debate toward the future of interrogation.

“Our intention is not to point fingers at anyone,” he said. “We’re just saying we have to bring interrogation up to the level of professionalism in other intelligence disciplines.”

It's yet another example of the ineffectiveness of lazy right wing thinking. Of bringing schoolyard bully boy tactics into the international arena and thinking that this will be effective. Of course, one should not be surprised. The Bush regime have long sought to use the threat of force as it's only negotiating tool, whether dealing with Iraq, Iran or captured terrorist suspects.

Six years on they still seem incapable - as they pile even more troops into Iraq in an attempt to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat - of engaging in any form of diplomatic solution. Force appears to be, literally, the only form of persuasion that they understand. And, even as the use of force delivers them defeat, their only answer is that we must have more of it.

If there has ever been a more intellectually stunted administration, I am unaware of it.

However, tucked in the middle of this report is a frank admission - previously denied - that the US have indeed been engaging in torture.

The Bush administration is nearing completion of a long-delayed executive order that will set new rules for interrogations by the Central Intelligence Agency. The order is expected to ban the harshest techniques used in the past, including the simulated drowning tactic known as waterboarding, but to authorize some methods that go beyond those allowed in the military by the Army Field Manual.

Despite the denials of the Bush administration that "the US doesn't do torture", the admission that the US has, in the past, engaged in "waterboarding" would be enough for most people on the planet to conclude that torture has, indeed, been part and parcel of US interrogation techniques.

One would hope that a panel of experts advising that torture doesn't work would be enough to dissuade the Bushites from continuing such practices but past experiences tell us that common sense and morality is lost on this administration.

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