Thanks Roxanne for posting a reply to dispute the water-boarding article on the Greenville Journal. I was appalled when I read Doug Greenlaw's attempt to make it sound legitimate. Cristina

Roxanne. I read your editorial in the Greenville Journal in response to mine. I don't agree with you but defend your right to voice your opinions. It's interesting to note that when I write a piece from "The Middle" I hear from both of the far right and left wings. The far right call me a soft lefty and the far left say I'm out there on the far right. In my opinion the Country is run from the "middle", middle class, middle income and middle minded. There's really not much difference between the moderate left and the moderate right, between the 40 yard lines so to speak. My thoughts, taken from experience, regarding waterboarding is my opinion. I'm totally against torture of any kind. It doesn't work. Period. Waterboarding never injured anyone. It's a psychological bluff. The far right call for gouging their eyes out and the far left call for cookies and tea. I say it's somewhere in between. I respect your opinion on waterboarding, you could be correct. A slightly softer tone might convince some of the folks in the middle, instead you are preaching to the choir, a small group on the far left.
Sincerely, Doug Greenlaw

Mr Greenlaw says that waterboarding is not torture and he says only 3 detainees have been tortured. Waterboarding is torture and has been so defined for at least a century. Torture has been punishable in this nation since 1775, before we had a Constitution.

1. He failed to mention that the US Army prosecuted US soldiers for waterboarding prisoners during the Phillipine Insurrection. We prosecuted US soldiers for waterboarding during the Vietnam war. See: http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/Investigation/story?id=1356870, and http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=15886834, plus hundreds of other documents. We also prosecuted a Japanese officer for waterboarding and sentenced him to over 10 years in jail. If memory serves, one of the witnesses against the Japanese was a surviving crewman of the Doolittle Raid on Tokyo.

2. Mr Greenlaw claims he confirmed that only three detainees have been waterboarded.
a. He fails to mention how many times they were waterboarded.
b. He fails to enumerate the number of detainees we put on rendition flights, originating from two counties in North Carolina, flown to foreign jurisdictions, where they were tortured. How man detainees did we do this to? How were they tortured? Several nations, pursuant to their (and our) obligations under the 1987 UN Convention Against Torture, are conducting their own investigations of the rendition flights from NC, e.g. Aero Aviation rendition flights from the Johnson County NC Airport.

3. On 2mar09, on behalf of NC Stop Torture Now, www.ncstoptorturenow.org, I spoke to the County Commissioners of Johnson County (owner of the airport). My letter that appeared in the Clayton News 11mar09 recaps those events. See: http://www.claytonnews-star.com/default.asp?sourceid=&smenu=90&twindow=Default&mad=No&sdetail=749&wpage=1&skeyword=&sidate=&ccat=&ccatm=&restate=&restatus=&reoption=&retype=&repmin=&repmax=&rebed=&rebath=&subname=&pform=&sc=2111&hn=claytonnews-star&he=.com, or http://tinyurl.com/a9vnaf

4. Mr Greenlaw states that waterboarding was used at the Army's Jungle Warfare School. As a young officer, I successfully completed that school before Mr Greenlaw. When I went through it was a three-week course (CRS 90C-D-F6). Waterboarding was not part of the training. I would like Mr. Greenlaw to get Dept of Army substantiation that it was used as part of the training, or substantiate it by means of fellow officers who can corroborate that waterboarding was used on them.

5. Some factual American history re torture:

a. Firstly, usually torture and such things are used/done by military
slobs/ineffectuals. Gen Washington learned this as a teen-age lieutenant in
the French and Indian War.
Here's the order Washington issued later as a Revolutionary War general,
14sep1775. This was a time when he was losing the war, Continental
Congress was biting him in the tail section, other officers wanted his
job, and Brits were routinely torturing Washington's soldiers.
Simply put Washington ordered his subordinate commanders to punish, even put to death
Washington's soldiers who committed torture on Brits.

“Should any American soldier be so base and infamous as to injure any
[prisoner]. . . I do most earnestly enjoin you to bring him to such severe
and exemplary punishment as the enormity of the crime may require. Should
it extend to death itself, it will not be disproportional to its guilt at
such a time and in such a cause… for by such conduct they bring shame,
disgrace and ruin to themselves and their country.” - George Washington,
charge to the Northern Expeditionary Force, Sept. 14, 1775

b. Next, Pres Lincoln in 1963 during the Civil War issued a large order
called General Order 100 which mandated how the war was to be conducted.
Article 16 of that order said Union troops were forbidden to use torture.
The max penalty as stated in the Articles 70 and so forth, was death. Here
is Article 16 Gen Order 100 which later became known as the Lieber Code. Art 16 is below, and the articles numbered in the 70s set out punishments. Max punishment, death.

Art. 16, Gen Order 100

"Military necessity does not admit of cruelty - that is, the infliction
of suffering for the sake of suffering or for revenge, nor of maiming
or wounding except in fight, nor of torture to extort confessions. It
does not admit of the use of poison in any way, nor of the wanton
devastation of a district. It admits of deception, but disclaims acts
of perfidy; and, in general, military necessity does not include any
act of hostility which makes the return to peace unnecessarily
difficult."
Lincoln knew that torture would make peace more difficult when it came.

As an aside, five years after the Civil War, General Order 100 (Lieber Code) became the basis of the Rules of Engagement for the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, which was an overture of sorts for WWI.

All these things became part of our Articles of War, later in 1951 part of our Uniform Code of Military Justice which governs conduct and punishments for our military services. They also became input into the Geneva Convention and in 1987 UN Convention Against Torture which even though they are
treaties, they are part of our laws. Even lawyers on the Right agree that
now the US is now in violation of the 1987 Convention Against Torture because we are
not investigating torture done by americans (small a) of the last
administration.

6. Here are some messages on torture sent to me by young combat-vetted officers"

a. From a young combat-experienced officer doing very dangerous
work:
"-----,
A Sufi Islam spin on the Golden Rule. ". . . for, what you do to others,
you do to yourself."

Our credibility as a righteous and moral nation relies on our ability to
accept that just because bad things are done to us by those who think we
are the enemy, it does not give us the right to bend our collective
morality for the illusion of a safer world.

All the self-righteous assholes on Fox News and other neo-con punditry
raging about the "War on Christmas" last month and now talking about the
validity of water-boarding need to go back and read their Bibles. Jesus
Christ, after undergoing days of brutal and relentless torture, being
nailed to the cross, and finally stabbed in the side, asked, with his
dying breath that those responsible for his torture and death be forgiven.

You know I am not religious at all. But there is little better to
illustrate the only righteous path on this issue. It's not about
forgiveness or safety. It's about the rule of law and the reality of
humanity. We are a species born of the same. As we realize this, accept
the pains of torture from others but not allow ourselves to be drawn into
it, our own righteousness and consciousness will affect the positive
changes beyond our society.

Love you and miss you. s/"

b. This from an infantry officer, second tour:

"Anyone who is "for torture" either a) has never been tortured or b) has
never served in the military, police, other law enforcement. Anyone who
thinks you get anything meaningful out of torture is a fool, plain and
simple. Look at how little information the North Vietnamese got from the
Americans they tortured in their POW camps. Little to none. What makes
our people think that ememy POWs, who are trained and submit to a
stronger, stricter ideology than outs hope to achieve? If our Soldiers
didn't fold under repeated beatings, it is almost guaranteed that theirs
will not fold either."

c. Another young officer in Iraq wrote me "Don't they know it doesn't work? Don't they know it makes our work harder?" This is the same point that the FBI/others have been trying to make to the CIA, DOD, and American Sheeple for years.


7. Waterboarding by our laws is torture. The sanctioning of torture by the last administration, has done us irreparable harm. Mr Greenlaw's fears are propagating that damage. Jane Mayer, in her book, The Dark Side, quotes historian Arthur M. Schlesinger on the new American fondness for torture: "No position taken has done more damage to the American reputation in the world -- ever." Mr Schlesinger who some of the True Believers might label a Leftist because he was an advisor to JFL, is one of our foremost historians. He also served in the OSS, precursor of the CIA, 1942-1945. (Check out what Mr Sclesinger did 1943-1945)

Thank you for your time.

Floyd McGurk, CIB, Vietnam '66-'67, '69-'70, plus two TDYs and two other SEA tours. Elder combat veteran of a family of four combat-vetted junior officers who've collectively been in Iraq 70 plus months since early 2006.

PS: I am surely no churcher. But alast year, I was in a small meeting of six or people and a congressman (Bob Inglis SCs-4th) in which a lady minister, Rev Brenda Kneece, SC Christian Action Council, representing 4500 congregations just tried to get Inglis to come out against torture. He did not have a clue about our historical, and in the main, noble 234-yr record of humane treatment of prisoners in our hands. Rev Kneece should be lauded for her anti-torture work. See also NRCAT.

PPS: The limits of torture are too difficult to control, even if you give
someone a brain-deadening checklist. And it always deteriorates, e.g., the
rape of Manila and countless others such happenings in history. (By the way, we
executed Gen Yamashita for Manila violence even though he'd only had that
command for a few weeks.)

Roxanne,

I sent Doug Greenlaw an e-mail with reference to his incredibly badly researched apology in support of the last administration. His web site would not accept it - so I sent a copy to John Lane.

I liked your piece, however, the main reason for not using torture as an interrogation technique is that it does not work. This has been known in the Western World since the early 1960's. I have attached a copy of my missive if you would care to read it.

Doug Brand


Dear Mr. Greenlaw,


I respect the fact that you gained certification as a Jungle Expert without going through “advanced interrogation techniques”. I was not so lucky.


The courses arranged for Special Boat Service Officers and Marines, (the fail rate exceeded 70%). All personnel had to be volunteers with additional recommendations from Commanding Officers and unit commanders. (All personnel had to have completed at least one tour in a Commando unit). If you were lucky enough to survive the selection process, you spent the next year doing modular training before you could be passed for Special Boat Service duty. One of the final exercises (of which there were many) was Escape and Evasion – Of course this was rigged so every one was captured. This was the program on which the SERE program was based. It was also before the course was toned down by Safety Regulations. I was interrogated for 60 hours which included all the usual techniques (blindfolding, white noise, sleep deprivation, stress positions, water torture, disorientation, humiliation etc.) It took me the following 72 hours before I could rationally believe it was only an exercise.


I suppose waterboarding sounds much more civilized than “water torture” However, it is not the name but the process which is under review. Anyone who has actually gone through this “technique” will tell you unreservedly that no matter what your beliefs, or whether it is an exercise or a real interrogation, You believe it is for real and you really are drowning. I can assure you that Islamic terrorists from arid regions or home grown terrorists in the USA will react in exactly the same manner. They will tell you what they think you want to hear in order to make you stop. Not exactly a reliable method (except of course in “24 hours”)


Also how do you signal that you have had enough and are willing to talk with both your hands and feet secured to the board and you are drowning?


When I went through Interrogation Training (1965) (to qualify for the Joint Interrogation Unit) it was drummed into us that any shape or form of torture would not garner any useful information and its only use (apart from sadistic pleasure) was to gather confessions from suspects, against their will.


The FBI had it right.


No matter what the CIA has said or done to justify their amateur and unproductive actions, they are doing what they do best, Lie. For example, how many hours of taped evidence did they destroy? I assume that you have concrete evidence that only 3 people were waterboarded, or are you relying on the CIA's account?


I also had first hand experience of Saddam Hussein's Mukhabarat when I was captured trying to escape Iraq after the Kuwait invasion. I held in isolation in the 52nd Street center of Iraq's Counter Intelligence headquarters in Baghdad. No proof of my existence was acknowledged by the Iraqi Government for nearly 10 months. I underwent 27 sessions of interrogation. Their object was to get me to confess to spying for the CIA and Mossad.


I was released in June of 1991. I was not hanged as I expected and I did not confess, unlike poor Farrad Bazoft, the reporter from the Manchester Guardian who after his coerced confession, shown on Iraqi TV in the Spring of 1990, was immediately hanged and his body dumped outside the British Embassy in Baghdad like a piece of garbage.


But why are we trying to justify our actions no matter that 9/11 did occur. Did that give us a license to behave like the terrorists who carried out the destruction of the twin towers?


Our representatives, on behalf of all Americans, presided over the Nazi war trials in Nuremberg and had a considerable role in drafting the Geneva Convention. We are supposed to set an example to rest of the World. We cannot just disregard the Geneva Convention if it becomes “inconvenient”. This convention was created to outlaw the brutality instigated by the Third Reich and Japan. Torture is a war crime.


Waterboarding is by any definition, torture, as are the other “advanced interrogation techniques” carried out in Abu Ghraib, Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay and the various secret sites set up by the CIA, (in order to be deniable) around the globe. It cannot be wallpapered over or hidden behind “advanced interrogation techniques”. There is no middle ground.


I also have severe doubts about your statement alleging the members of your Jungle Training Course who underwent interrogation, ended up laughing about the experience.


Douglas Brand

Captain MC RM (ret.)