Casca: Where to begin? First off, at 43, I’m a little young to be a “retiree”. I was invalided out of the Army in 1988 as a result of being involved in a helicopter crash. I spent five years in (three as a Ranger), and then sayonara. So, while I had planned being a lifer, it didn’t work out that way.
I have friends in Iraq, Colombia and Afghanistan. While no one divulges anything of a sensitive nature, I get enough information to have a good sense of what is going on. All of us came up during the Reagan years (military wise), so there are no illusions about politicos or why we are doing what we are doing.
As far as the comparison between a civil war/insurgency in Central America and WWII, well, there really isn’t one. Our goal was extremely simple: Win the hearts and minds of the people and thus eliminate support, aid and sustenance to the FMLN movement. Our first step was getting the government of El Sal and the right wing death squads (such as Mano Blanco) to stop killing and torturing their own people. I’m sure the SD and Gestapo had proven methods of torturing, but the Salvadoran government and military didn’t. At least I don’t think they did: Nailing a baby’s head to a wall seems extremely ineffective.
There is also a huge difference between torture and interrogation. The information and intel yielded under torture is not, generally speaking, of high value. The subject will tell you virtually anything to get the pain to stop and the nature of the questions will eventually led him to give you the information he believes you want. We got more solid intel by breaking someone down over several days with intensive questioning and using a variety of psyops then by tying them to a chair and going after them with a phone book and a 2 liter of Bubble Up.
When I brought up the question regarding Gitmo and prosecutions, it was solely because that was one of the stated intents of that facility’s existence. We are warehousing all of those supposed terrorists, but gaining little intel and putting almost none of them away, in terms of incarceration.
As far as the number of them that will “live to fight another day”: Why are so many now slated for release? Is it because the Administration is bowing to outside pressure from NGOs, or is it because only a miniscule number of them are even remotely tied to terrorist organizations? I’ll let you and your bulls**t detector go look that one up.
I thought Dershowitz wrote an excellent piece on torture using his potential nuke threat as a rationale for torturing to gain information. I still didn’t agree with him, though. The senior NCOs and officers I worked with down south were all former Vietnam hands who had faced the North Vietnamese Army and Vietcong. They were very familiar with both torture and interrogation and, almost universally, chose interrogation as the best means to gain solid and usable intel. They were all products of the HARD school of experience and most of them were Special Forces. Not a gentle bunch and not squeamish, either. You use those means that are most effective. Our record in that war speaks for itself, and we were able to accomplish it without sacrificing our honor or humanity. Both of which were in very short supply amongst the Nazis, whose record speaks for itself as well.
At some point, with torture and rendition, you become what you behold. So what is the gain if we “win” the War on Terror and sacrifice all that we hold dear in the process?
There are only a handful of us left from the group I served with. We’ve lost people in Somalia, Iraq, South America and Afghanistan. All of us believe in this country in a way you probably don’t understand. I think of the quote: “For those that fight for it, Freedom has a flavor the sheltered never know”.
It is easy to pontificate about torture and whether waterboarding is or isn’t, along with whether or not rendition is acceptable, and do so from the comfort of your den. It is quite another to have seen these things firsthand. I’m sure it pains your towering intellect to have to deign to deal with us mere mortals and our decided lack of neuronal plasticity, but someone of us actually do know of what we speak and why some things are just WRONG. No need to reason or argue about it.
