A Lapse in Intelligence

Colonel Steven Kleinman, who has referred to himself as the "most unpopular officer" in all of Iraq, describes the previous administration's support of SERE tactics for interrogation as not only ineffective in securing accurate intelligence, but also as a systematic approach to torture that clearly compromises essential moral values upon which this nation was founded.

SERE, which stands for "survival, evasion, resistance, and escape," refers to a formal, structured group of strategies to resist hostile interrogation. During the period of the Cold War, American service people were trained in SERE in order to resist possible severe, torturous interrogations in situations such as the Korean War, at the hands of the Chinese. The Bush administration re-introduced the flip-side of SERE; that is, it encouraged and supported the very techniques of interrogation that earlier service people had been trained to resist and withstand.

In a recent interview with NPR (All Things Considered, April 23, 2009), Kleinman confirmed that the tenets of SERE had been employed against detainees in Iraq:

"Exactly, and I think a key point that your listeners need to understand, so they can grasp the gravity of the situation, is that the primary objective of that approach to interrogation was not truth … but somebody's political truth. In the Korean War, they actually compelled some of our pilots to admit to dropping chemical weapons on cities and so forth, when in fact that didn't happen. Now, that stands in stark contrast to intelligence interrogation, where the overriding objective is provide timely, accurate, reliable, comprehensive intelligence." http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=103421778

The Bush administration was well aware that these SERE techniques were not created to extract accurate intelligence; they were employed to make people say things that were not true, and to promote propoganda. These strategies are of little or no use if one's primary objective is to obtain important, useful information to help the young American men and women in harm's way. Colonel Kleinman referred to himself as the "most unpopular officer" in all of Iraq because a culture of systematic torture of detainees had become a deeply penetrated status quo by the time he arrived on the scene, and Kleinman was perceived as an unwelcome enforcer of morality. The standard defense of these tactics by those who in engaged in them was that this was, at the very least, the expected treatment our soldiers would receive from the enemy if they were ever captured. This is a very different justification, this "eye for an eye" reasoning, than the official position that the main purpose of these interrogations was to obtain intelligence.

Our government sanctioned, encouraged, and instituted a systematic regime of torture applied to detainees that not only compromised the safety and well-being of our enlisted men and women by wasting time on ineffective interrogation methods, but also indoctrinated those Americans involved in the torture process in a method of treatment that goes against our core American value of respect for basic human dignity.

Perhaps these SERE tactics were effective, at times, despite what research and experience has shown, but I question whether or not the information obtained through these methods could have been obtained through other, less damaging, means. Because, in the end, what has been damaged, once again, is our reputation and our sense of ourselves as Americans. On April 29th, President Obama addressed these concerns through the following statements:

"Could we have gotten that information without using these techniques?" (a core question) and "Are we safer?" (a broader question)

"Churchill understood...you start taking shortcuts, and it corrodes the character of a people."

"Hold true to your ideals when it's hard, not just when it's easy to." (This was said in reference to our actions against detainees now being used as an Al Quaeda recruitment tool.)

"...stick to who we are, even when dealing with unscrupulous enemies."

And, finally, our current president reiterated a primary focus of his leadership that he thinks about every day, and every night before he goes to sleep:

"I will be judged as a Commander in Chief by how safe I am keeping the people...the best way I can do that is by making sure that we are not taking shortcuts that undermine who we are."

The Bush adminstration should be held responsible for our government's engagement in systematic torture techniques. I support any and all investigations into this extreme and damaging lapse of moral judgement, even at a time when the present administration must deal with more than any other administration's share of moral, economic, and policy clean-up from the past eight dark, horrific years.