The torture news that the NYT sees fit to print

While the New York Times apparently doesn't think the Al Qaeda torture story is news fit to print, here the Times continues its obsession with the "outmoded, amateurish, and unreliable" interrogation methods Americans use. As the Times reports:

As the Bush administration completes secret new rules governing interrogations, a group of experts advising the intelligence agencies are arguing that the harsh techniques used since the 2001 terrorist attacks are outmoded, amateurish and unreliable.

So what do the psychologists and other specialists sourced by the Times recommend?

Randy Borum, identified as a psychologist at the University of South Floriday and a consultant to the Defense Department, suggests adopting marketing techniques. As the Times reports:

“We have a whole social science literature on persuasion,” Mr. Borum said. “It’s mostly on how to get a person to buy a certain brand of toothpaste. But it certainly could be useful in improving interrogation.”

According to the Times:

The notion that turning up pressure and pain on a prisoner will produce valuable intelligence is a staple of popular culture from the television series “24” to the recent Republican presidential debate, where some candidates tried to outdo one another in vowing to get tough on captured terrorists.

The newspaper did, in all fairness, then duly cite that a 2005 Harvard study "supported the selective use of 'highly coercive' techniques." As the Times went on to report:

Defenders of the harshest interrogations, particularly as practiced by the C.I.A. at secret overseas sites, say they were carefully devised and have produced valuable intelligence. An agency spokesman, Paul Gimigliano, said the program “has generated a rich volume of intelligence that has helped the United States and other countries disrupt terrorist activities and save innocent lives.”

Another soft technique proponent, Steven M. Kleinman, a former Air Force interrogator and trainer, pointed to the "effective questioning" of German and Japanese prisoners during World War II. He said that in a questioning process that took about four hours, World War II interrogators were able to "educe information" without stooping to torture.

The Times, however, did not provide specific examples of just what type of information these four-hour conversations educed.

In fact, the Times failed to provide any specific cases where soft techniques had produced valuable information. From this I gathered that most soft technique proponents base their arguments largely on the immorality of harsh techniques - as opposed to the better results they produce.

But I do concede that perhaps this was because this is the Timess position as opposed that of the experts. And then it would make sense why the reporter didn't think it was even necessary to provide any concrete examples that show that soft techniques do in fact work.

Anyway, I wasn't really surprised to then read that Robert A. Fein, the Harvard psychologist who directored an Intelligence Science Board study of the subject, wrote in a prologue to the group's 325-page report that, contrary to what Mr. Borum told the Times, in fact, there is a shortage of relevant research.

According to Mr. Fein, this is why U.S. interrogators had to wing it after 9/11, and why there ended up being some, as he puts it, “unfortunate cases of abuse.”

The Times, incidentally, gave some interesting background in its report:

Many of the techniques that have come in for such criticism were based on those used in the military’s Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape training, or SERE, in which for decades American service members were given a sample of the brutal treatment they might face if captured.

Because the training was developed during the cold war, the techniques later adopted by the C.I.A. and Special Operations officers in Iraq were based, at least in part, on how the Soviet Union and its allies were believed to treat prisoners. Such techniques included prolonged use of stress positions, exposure to heat and cold, sleep deprivation and even waterboarding.

Let's hope that for our future enemies' sake that in the next war, Americans don't base their interrogation techniques Al Qaeda's torture manual. Yes, the same manual, as I mentioned at the beginning of this post, that the Times continues to ignore.

I guess their view of news is if Americans bleed - or caused the bleading - it leads; otherwise it's not fit to print.

Torture Al Qaeda style - and if you think the U.S. military recruitment methods are bad, check out the ones al Qaeda is using....

The mainstream media seems largely uninterested in the story of al Qaeda's treatment of Iraqi detainees, but thankfully CNN's Senior Baghdad, Jane Arraf, is on the case, reporting on Iraqslogger from Baquba:

He wasn’t anyone rich, or important – he only sold used clothes for a living but they saw him smoking at the bus depot and that was enough for them to take him away.

He rolls up his pants to show me the scars inflicted during four days in captivity by suspected al-Qaeda members – this 24-year-old Iraqi man afraid to give his name and afraid to show his face on camera.

His legs are painfully thin from what appears to be a lifetime of near malnutrition. On his ankles, feet and hands are the raised round scars where he says his captors butted cigarettes out on his skin. He pulls up his striped cotton T-shirt to show me the same marks on his chest.

“They told me the Islamic State prohibits smoking,” he said. They were wearing masks, he said. When they checked his ID they found a Shiite name. They shoved him face-first into a car, blindfolded him and took him to the house in Baquba crowded with hostages.

The vendor was one of seven Iraqis rescued by soldiers from the 3-2 Stryker Brigade’s 5th Battalion 20th Infantry Regiment when they swept through an area of Old Baquba last week known as an al-Qaeda stronghold.

Nine others they were holding – including four Iraqi police – were shot dead just before the Americans arrived and the insurgents fled.

The man told Arraf that Al Qaeda was holding him because they wanted to kill his son, an Iraqi policeman.

As Arraf went on to report:

American and Iraqi officials say while al-Qaeda is able to draw marginalized young men with few prospects, when they don’t come willingly, they are using increasingly brutal recruiting methods.

“People used to be able to get by by saying ‘We’re with you’ and offer passive support by turning a blind eye to a lot of things that are going on. Now they say ‘you’re with us or against us’ and if you say ‘I’m with you’, they make you prove it,” [a U.S. intelligence who insisted on anonymity] officer said.

She said one 15-year-old boy arrested in Baquba said he was kidnapped by al Qaeda, raped and beaten and told they would kill his family unless he joined them. His first test was shooting someone, she said.

Contrast all the headlines your reading about this Al Qaeda torture story with the barrage you had to endure regarding Abu Ghraib.

The media's deafening silence reminds me of the UN Human Rights Council.

Last June, the council distinguished itself by singling out Israel for annual reviews of its alleged human rights abuses while expressing no interest in reviewing the activities of other countries with far worse records - namely, Myanmar, and North Korea, not not to mention several Arab countries.

Even then Secretary-General Kofi Annan was was incredulous. As he said in his annual International Human Rights Day address that year: "[It's] not that Israel should be given a free pass. Absolutely not. But the Council should give the same attention to grave violations committed by other states as well.".

By the same token, coudn't the media at least mention this Al Qaeda torture story?

Really, it's not as if it could be considered culturally insensitive or anything. Al Qaeda's victims here are other Arabs, in many cases, their fellow Sunnis. The media shouldn't be giving these guys a pass just because they're not, I don't know, Western, American, Israeli, whatever.

Can't everyone just be held to the same standard? I am certain people would suffer less if this simple rule were applied.

Another Sunni province in Iraq turning against Al Qaeda; meanwhile Sadr's militia is terrorizing Iraqi policemen elsewhere in Iraq

The Associated Press reports:

American forces freed 42 kidnapped Iraqis — some of whom had been hung from ceilings and tortured for months — in a raid Sunday on an al-Qaida hideout north of Baghdad, the U.S. military said.

Military officials said the operation, launched on tips from residents, showed that Iraqis in the turbulent Diyala province were turning against Sunni insurgents and beginning to trust U.S. troops.

As the AP went on to report:

"The more contact we have (with) the Iraqi citizens, the more confidence that they develop in us, and in the Iraqi police and the Iraqi army. That leads to greater cooperation from the Iraqi citizenry," said Lt. Col. Christopher Garver, a U.S. military spokesman.

Meanwhile, as the AP goes on to report:

...in Kut, 100 miles southeast of Baghdad, 70 police officers resigned from an elite police unit and handed over their weapons, saying they were afraid of the Mahdi Army militia of the radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, police said.

As one officer told the AP: "I fear reprisals, I want to keep my family and relatives safe."

When it's Al Qaeda who is doing the torture it doesn't make Page One

Don Surber has a hilarious take on the mainstream media's coverage of the Al Qaeda torture story. An excerpt:

What was Amnesty International’s reaction?

cricket chirp

Yet Amesty International just 3 days ago called for the US to close Guantanamo Bay.

Where did USA Today play the torture book story?

Not on Page One.

Where did the New York Times play it?

Not on Page One.

Where did the Washington Post play it?

Not on Page One.

And yet such false stories as the “flushed Koran” got widespread play in the newspapers and on television.

But read the whole thing as it's very funny.

Torture al Qaeda style

The Smoking Gun reports:

In a recent raid on an al-Qaeda safe house in Iraq, U.S. military officials recovered an assortment of crude drawings depicting torture methods like "blowtorch to the skin" and "eye removal." Along with the images, which you'll find on the following pages, soldiers seized various torture implements, like meat cleavers, whips, and wire cutters. Photos of those items can be seen here. The images, which were just declassified by the Department of Defense, also include a picture of a ramshackle Baghdad safe house described as an "al-Qaeda torture chamber." It was there, during an April 24 raid, that soldiers found a man suspended from the ceiling by a chain. According to the military, he had been abducted from his job and was being beaten daily by his captors. In a raid earlier this week, Coalition Forces freed five Iraqis who were found in a padlocked room in Karmah. The group, which included a boy, were reportedly beaten with chains, cables, and hoses. Photos showing injuries sustained by those captives can be found here.

Contrast these images with what went on at Abu Ghraib or reports of "extensive torture" by Americans at Guantanamo.