by Phil Steinseik
Prosecute war criminals
As a former interrogator for the United States Army from 1987-95, let me state this as clearly as possible:
We were taught to abide by the Geneva Conventions regarding the rules of war and the treatment of prisoners of war. They further instructed us that torture, as much as we may feel justified to use it, does not reveal accurate or reliable intelligence.
We know that in WWII, the United States of America hung members of the German and Japanese military because they used torture techniques like water boarding against Allied soldiers and civilians.
Torture does succeed in violently and sadistically persuading your captive to say whatever needs to be said in order to get this cruel and painful technique to stop.
That is why torture is an effective political weapon used by rogue nation states. Torture is used to break the will of the human individual in order to obtain the required and accepted behavior as sanctioned by the state. Victims are coerced to abandon their individuality, values, belief systems in order to conform to the will and to the illusion of reality as offered by the state.
Why did the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld regime use torture? With no evidence of WMDs in Iraq or a Hussein/al-Qaida connection, these three men needed to obtain coerced false confessions from detainees and prisoners to justify their illegal invasion of a sovereign state in order to steal oil resources. The abuse and torture at Abu Ghraib by U.S. Army military police were done because they were following orders. These soldiers are now in prison for following orders given to them by individuals further up the chain of command.
These policymakers, including and supporting Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld, are made up of war criminals, who must be investigated, indicted and prosecuted under U.S. federal law.
Nicholas J. Petrish III
Anacortes
