In the mid 60s I was a young soldier posted to the Intelligence Centre at Woodside South Australia. During the course of my time there I was detailed as staff on what was then called a Code of Conduct course. Maybe it still is, I don?t know. Young officers and NCOs would do the course to prepare them for war service so, if captured, they were at least aware of the interrogation methods of the enemy.
They would volunteer and arrive at the Intelligence Centre all ready for a week in the classroom studying Communists and other terrorist organizations.
That?s not what happened. They were put in a truck and were told they were going for a trip to look over the camp. A mile up the track the truck was ambushed, the students were captured in a very realistic and frightening manner (read shots fired, explosions, rough manhandling and rifle butts in the ribs) and they were bundled off to a camp we had built in the hills.
The role of the staff was to break these officers and NCOs within four days.
They were interrogated, forced to sleep in cells 1.5 m by 1.5 m that were designed NOT to give them a good night sleep. To small to lie down in, to low to sit up comfortably and the floor was large grade blue metal stone that neither encouraged sleeping nor sitting up.
The temperatures at Woodside in June are in single figures Celsius.
They were subject to sleep deprivation, hosed with high pressure hoses at random times like 02.30 and subject to sense disruption. The cells were blacked out so day or night was undistinguishable, and they were hooded when out of their cages, propaganda was blasted over loudspeakers at an unsafe level and they were manhandled to the point of bruising. They were stripped naked, hosed in cold temperatures and humiliated by staff.
They were subjected to trails by Kangaroo Court, found guilty and given a death sentence. One guilty man was taken outside and a shot rang out.
One of the students still inside the room feinted.
After four days they were totally disorientated and were on the verge of believing what was happening to them was real, even though they knew they were on a course.
Check out a man after 48 sleep deprivation ? he is functioning on the edge and after 72 hours the brain is loosing coordination.
Then you question him and maybe the answers save lives.
They volunteered. That?s what we do, us professionals. We are often harder on ourselves than on the enemy. We have to understand what it takes to get information out of a man that may, and often does, save lives. And we have to know how to withstand interrogation.
If you have been brought up on WW2 movies with clever interrogators outsmarting the German pilot and learning his secrets just by clever script writing then forget it. It didn?t happen that way and it still doesn?t.
This is not a profession for wimps. This is soldiering. We have to be this hard to protect our citizens against terrorism and sometimes, against themselves.
So what the hell is going on in Abu Ghraib? Nothing untoward has been stated so far. Taking a camera into the centre and snapping happy shots with sexual connotations was pretty stupid but that?s about it.
You see, the end does justify the means. Outside of murder or permanent damage; sense and sleep deprivation, some ego destroying humiliation and just a little bit of biff is OK while it saves lives. If you don?t like it – if its to much for your sensitive liberal upbringing then don?t read about it. just let us get on with trying to save your over protected indulgent self. I don?t mind if you have led a protected life and think these things that happen in war are so? well ..so terrible. Just let the soldiers do what they have to do.
You think Abu Ghraib is all about human rights?
You?re wrong.
Abu Ghraib is all about an attack on Bush and Howard. The suffering of the poor dears in prison is of no import to the left. Don?t kid yourself that they feel for them. They only care about the damage it can do the US.
And while we?re on the subject, why is it that the International Rules of War only apply to us Westerners?
If we apply these so called rules to war then we are condemned to fail. The media demand the US behave like Amnesty International undergrads and don?t even talk of WTC or the USS Cole or a dozen other obscenities. The Terrorists can blow up our woman and kids but we can?t soften up Iraqi thugs for interrogation to try and prevent it happening again. The Taliban decapitate woman for adultery and we can?t lock up Hicks, a Taliban soldier, for volunteering to kill Coalition forces. He could have been in a position to kill an Australian and although he was most probably not professional enough to succeed, he would have tried.
The left argue for a set of conditions and rules that flies in the face of every thing that happens in war. They demand the military be nice and humane to the Iraqi thug while the young soldier guarding him has just came back on watch after viewing Nick Berg?s 30 seconds of fame. Read him a bedside story, Sergeant, and tuck him in.
There were no rights in 1944 and Allied and Axis troops were shot dead on sight over the first few days of the invasion ? armed or not ,and I don?t blame them. It was that attitude that gave us the freedoms we have today ? the ones we are fighting for.
It sure as hell wasn?t anything that a Human Rights lawyer said or did.
As indicated earlier I come from a harder world. While others of my generation were getting high on weed and giggling over Marx, quoting Mao Tse Dung, and having fun supporting the enemy at Moratoriums I was picking up the pieces of their insanity and listening to the headman of a village weep over his wife and daughter raped, sliced and diced on the orders of a Marx/Ho Chi Minh inspired and Western Press supported political commissar.
Myself, I would give serious consideration to free-falling Osama Bin Laden from an aircraft at a height roughly equivalent to that distance people fell from the upper floors of the WTC. I would have the DZ fenced and populated by pigs and I would video the whole fall and the aftermath and offer the tape to AL Jazira.
Transmit this, you bastards!