USAF 'Gator: I'm Tortured By What I Saw
 

Washington Post
November 30, 2008
Pg. B1

I'm Still Tortured By What I Saw In Iraq

By Matthew Alexander

I should have felt triumphant when I returned from Iraq in August 2006. Instead, I was worried and exhausted. My team of interrogators had successfully hunted down one of the most notorious mass murderers of our generation, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq and the mastermind of the campaign of suicide bombings that had helped plunge Iraq into civil war. But instead of celebrating our success, my mind was consumed with the unfinished business of our mission: fixing the deeply flawed, ineffective and un-American way the U.S. military conducts interrogations in Iraq. I'm still alarmed about that today.

I'm not some ivory-tower type; I served for 14 years in the U.S. Air Force, began my career as a Special Operations pilot flying helicopters, saw combat in Bosnia and Kosovo, became an Air Force counterintelligence agent, then volunteered to go to Iraq to work as a senior interrogator. What I saw in Iraq still rattles me -- both because it betrays our traditions and because it just doesn't work.

Violence was at its peak during my five-month tour in Iraq. In February 2006, the month before I arrived, Zarqawi's forces (members of Iraq's Sunni minority) blew up the golden-domed Askariya mosque in Samarra, a shrine revered by Iraq's majority Shiites, and unleashed a wave of sectarian bloodshed. Reprisal killings became a daily occurrence, and suicide bombings were as common as car accidents. It felt as if the whole country was being blown to bits.

Amid the chaos, four other Air Force criminal investigators and I joined an elite team of interrogators attempting to locate Zarqawi. What I soon discovered about our methods astonished me. The Army was still conducting interrogations according to the Guantanamo Bay model: Interrogators were nominally using the methods outlined in the U.S. Army Field Manual, the interrogators' bible, but they were pushing in every way possible to bend the rules -- and often break them. I don't have to belabor the point; dozens of newspaper articles and books have been written about the misconduct that resulted. These interrogations were based on fear and control; they often resulted in torture and abuse.

I refused to participate in such practices, and a month later, I extended that prohibition to the team of interrogators I was assigned to lead. I taught the members of my unit a new methodology -- one based on building rapport with suspects, showing cultural understanding and using good old-fashioned brainpower to tease out information. I personally conducted more than 300 interrogations, and I supervised more than 1,000. The methods my team used are not classified (they're listed in the unclassified Field Manual), but the way we used them was, I like to think, unique. We got to know our enemies, we learned to negotiate with them, and we adapted criminal investigative techniques to our work (something that the Field Manual permits, under the concept of "ruses and trickery"). It worked. Our efforts started a chain of successes that ultimately led to Zarqawi.

Over the course of this renaissance in interrogation tactics, our attitudes changed. We no longer saw our prisoners as the stereotypical al-Qaeda evildoers we had been repeatedly briefed to expect; we saw them as Sunni Iraqis, often family men protecting themselves from Shiite militias and trying to ensure that their fellow Sunnis would still have some access to wealth and power in the new Iraq. Most surprisingly, they turned out to despise al-Qaeda in Iraq as much as they despised us, but Zarqawi and his thugs were willing to provide them with arms and money. I pointed this out to Gen. George Casey, the former top U.S. commander in Iraq, when he visited my prison in the summer of 2006. He did not respond.

Perhaps he should have. It turns out that my team was right to think that many disgruntled Sunnis could be peeled away from Zarqawi. A year later, Gen. David Petraeus helped boost the so-called Anbar Awakening, in which tens of thousands of Sunnis turned against al-Qaeda in Iraq and signed up with U.S. forces, cutting violence in the country dramatically.

Our new interrogation methods led to one of the war's biggest breakthroughs: We convinced one of Zarqawi's associates to give up the al-Qaeda in Iraq leader's location. On June 8, 2006, U.S. warplanes dropped two 500-pound bombs on a house where Zarqawi was meeting with other insurgent leaders.

But Zarqawi's death wasn't enough to convince the joint Special Operations task force for which I worked to change its attitude toward interrogations. The old methods continued. I came home from Iraq feeling as if my mission was far from accomplished. Soon after my return, the public learned that another part of our government, the CIA, had repeatedly used waterboarding to try to get information out of detainees.

I know the counter-argument well -- that we need the rough stuff for the truly hard cases, such as battle-hardened core leaders of al-Qaeda, not just run-of-the-mill Iraqi insurgents. But that's not always true: We turned several hard cases, including some foreign fighters, by using our new techniques. A few of them never abandoned the jihadist cause but still gave up critical information. One actually told me, "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."

Torture and abuse are against my moral fabric. The cliche still bears repeating: Such outrages are inconsistent with American principles. And then there's the pragmatic side: Torture and abuse cost American lives.

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. The large majority of suicide bombings in Iraq are still carried out by these foreigners. They are also involved in most of the attacks on U.S. and coalition forces 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.

After my return from Iraq, I began to write about my experiences because I felt obliged, as a military officer, not only to point out the broken wheel but to try to fix it. When I submitted the manuscript of my book about my Iraq experiences to the Defense Department for a standard review to ensure that it did not contain classified information, I got a nasty shock. Pentagon officials delayed the review past the first printing date and then redacted an extraordinary amount of unclassified material -- including passages copied verbatim from the Army's unclassified Field Manual on interrogations and material vibrantly displayed on the Army's own Web site. I sued, first to get the review completed and later to appeal the redactions. Apparently, some members of the military command are not only unconvinced by the arguments against torture; they don't even want the public to hear them.

My experiences have landed me in the middle of another war -- one even more important than the Iraq conflict. The war after the war is a fight about who we are as Americans. Murderers like Zarqawi can kill us, but they can't force us to change who we are. We can only do that to ourselves. One day, when my grandkids sit on my knee and ask me about the war, I'll say to them, "Which one?"

Americans, including officers like myself, must fight to protect our values not only from al-Qaeda but also from those within our own country who would erode them. Other interrogators are also speaking out, including some former members of the military, the FBI and the CIA who met last summer to condemn torture and have spoken before Congress -- at considerable personal risk.

We're told that our only options are to persist in carrying out torture or to face another terrorist attack. But there truly is a better way to carry out interrogations -- and a way to get out of this false choice between torture and terror.

I'm actually quite optimistic these days, in no small measure because President-elect Barack Obama has promised to outlaw the practice of torture throughout our government. But until we renounce the sorts of abuses that have stained our national honor, al-Qaeda will be winning. Zarqawi is dead, but he has still forced us to show the world that we do not adhere to the principles we say we cherish. We're better than that. We're smarter, too.

Matthew Alexander led an interrogations team assigned to a Special Operations task force in Iraq in 2006. He is the 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 is writing under a pseudonym for security reasons.

Another idiot joins the book fray. If he actually thinks this is the #1 reason the islamic foreign fighters came, he's a moron and a liar.

And when I found out your name I will publish it on this thread.

Team Sergeant

Thanks TS, that's a good call.
 

What a moron, in truth. Sink a boat load of those into the Atlantic. Blitz

I'd wager it is Matthew Alexander.:D

TR

Not only is he a moron but he's also a coward of the worst kind.

Had I witnessed something as "horrific" as this candy-ass says he did while in UNIFORM I would have gone straight to the Generals office and let him know what I think. A coward writes a book after the fact.

Reaper what makes you think "Matthew Alexander" is not his/her pseudonym?

"...Americans, including officers like myself, must fight to protect our values not only from al-Qaeda but also from those within our own country who would erode them. Other interrogators are also speaking out, including some former members of the military, the FBI and the CIA who met last summer to condemn torture and have spoken before Congress -- at considerable personal risk.

We're told that our only options are to persist in carrying out torture or to face another terrorist attack. But there truly is a better way to carry out interrogations -- and a way to get out of this false choice between torture and terror...."

Not that I need to tell most here, but for those who are not military or familiar with the elements involved with Zarq's demise: this turd, piece of shit is LYING. While there were times of frustration when our gators wanted to do something to detainees, professionalism won out - and contradictory to what you hear, not because of some altruistic sort at the lowest level, as this buttweasel tries to portray himself, but because the chain of command stressed it from top down.
I hope the people who busted their asses have the chance to rebuff these dirtbags...

I was there - he was a weasely opportunistic dirtbag augmentee who enjoyed the amenities of living on a comfortable FOB while men better than he went out to capture/kill these scumbags every night, bringing some back alive when we surely didn't have to - so gators could get us more targets, but we knew their job was hard because they did not do the things he speaks of re torture. As for the rapport based approach - everyone knew that was the most effective method and it was posted with the stats for all to see when reviewing most effective methods this butt pirate is acting as if was something he came up with, cowardly turd.

man this guy is a piece of SHIT!

1-0 out

I think this guy is full of s*&^.

He is a Spec Ops helo pilot, counter intelligence agent and a gator assigned to the TF that nailed Zarq????????????

I doubt it.

I'll take that wager. I like Guiness. :D

He is also being published by Simon-Schuster Canada. You can go there and read an excerpt...gag. It's guys like this who put the 'a' in Air Farce. :rolleyes:

It might be interesting to know why he gave up a pilot's job for a CI one--something no respectable zoomie would ever do. ;)

Richard's $.02 :munchin

He was just on Fox News. Alan loved him.

Disclaimer: I don't know this guy or have any info to prove or disprove that he did or did not do what he's claiming.

With that being said it would not surprise me in the least if he actually did get into it and here's why. The Air Force leadership from the base level through the 4 star level believe that pilots can do anything better than anyone else regardless of experience or training. They routinely put pilots in jobs they are not qualified for both CONUS and down range, even though they have little or most often no experience, case and point, currently probably around 20% of AF Mission Support Group (MSG) (O-6) commanders are pilots, for those who don't know the MSG encompasses Civil Engineering, Security Forces, Services, used to be Logistics, Military Personal Flight, Communications flight etc, pilots know nothing of any of these things, similarly pilots used to oversee the maintenance even though they never worked on the planes, they just flew them, for the past 7 years however they've had actual maintenance officers in charge of Maintenance who understand all the ins and outs of actually working on aircraft, but the AF leadership were trying to go back to having pilots in charge so they could have more commands. AF leadership will put universal badge wearers in charge of MSG squadrons as well, simply because the pilots need a command even though they have no experience in the squadron they're commanding. It's essentially like putting a Supply officer in charge of an infantry company, makes no sense but they do it anyway. In any case, if the author were a Special Operations pilot it is plausible that he could have been in a place to get into a task force, especially if he had prior intel experience or if he somehow got disqualified from flying duty (I've seen pilots go to some pretty extreme lengths to help out other pilots including getting them good jobs that they were not even remotely qualified for), it would be even more believable if an AF type were in charge of the task force, again I'm not saying it happened or it's right if it did happen, just that it is possible.

Personally, I think the guy sounds about like many of the pilots I came into contact with, most of which don't really have any understanding of the wars we're in, very few had any concept of the mentality of our enemies, most were too afraid of anyone getting hurt to actually get the mission done, and very few had the stones to do what has to be done, unless of course it's from 24000feet with a 1000lb bomb.

Just my .02

By his own statements, Alexander has made just hundreds of new friends. The friends were his prisioners. Perhaps the money he plans to earn from his book, allows him to sleep at night; to compensate for the guilt of having enemy combatants as pals.

Alexander should be a greatful ex-pilot who has been able to realise a personal profit from a war. Who knows, perhaps BHO will name him the next Dir. of the CIA. I wonder if he has any friends left in the US military?
My $.02.


RF 1

I saw a bit of the interview on Fox News. Now it starts to make more sense, Matthew Alexander is gay. :rolleyes:

I don't get it TS. How did you get that out of the interview? :confused:

GB TFS :munchin

He's "I'm Still Tortured By What I Saw In Iraq" I'm Still Tortured By What I Saw In San Francisco, it didn't take long for me to come to the conclusion he's gay and spineless.;)