Letter from high-ranking retired members of the U.S. Armed forces to Senator John McCain

We strongly support your proposed amendments to the Defense Department Authorization bill concerning detainee policy, including requiring all interrogations of detainees in DOD custody to conform to the U.S. Army’s Field Manual on Intelligence Interrogation (FM 34-52), and prohibiting the use of torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment by any U.S. government agency.

The abuse of prisoners hurts America’s cause in the war on terror, endangers U.S. service members who might be captured by the enemy, and is anathema to the values Americans have held dear for generations. For many years, those values have been embodied in the Army Field Manual. The Manual applies the wisdom and experience gained by military interrogators in conflicts against both regular and irregular foes. It authorizes techniques that have proven effective in extracting life-saving information from the most hardened enemy prisoners. It also recognizes that torture and cruel treatment are ineffective methods, because they induce prisoners to say what their interrogators want to hear, even if it is not true, while bringing discredit upon the United States.

It is now apparent that the abuse of prisoners in Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo and elsewhere took place in part because our men and women in uniform were given ambiguous instructions, which in some cases authorized treatment that went beyond what was allowed by the Army Field Manual. Administration officials confused matters further by declaring that U.S. personnel are not bound by longstanding prohibitions of cruel treatment when interrogating non-U.S. citizens on foreign soil. As a result, we suddenly had one set of rules for interrogating prisoners of war, and another for “enemy combatants;” one set for Guantánamo, and another for Iraq; one set for our military, and another for the CIA. Our service members were denied clear guidance, and left to take the blame when things went wrong. They deserve better than that.

The United States should have one standard for interrogating enemy prisoners that is effective, lawful, and humane. Fortunately, America already has the gold standard in the Army Field Manual. Had the Manual been followed across the board, we would have been spared the pain of the prisoner abuse scandal. It should be followed consistently from now on. And when agencies other than DOD detain and interrogate prisoners, there should be no legal loopholes permitting cruel or degrading treatment.

The amendments proposed by Senator McCain would achieve these goals while preserving our nation’s ability to fight the war on terror. They reflect the experience and highest traditions of the United States military. We urge the Congress to support this effort.

The Real Abuse at Guantanamo TechCentral Station ^

| June 29, 2005 | Gordon Cucullu

Posted on 10/07/2005 12:27:06 PM PDT by FairOpinion

After speaking with soldiers, sailors, and civilians who collectively staff the Joint Task Force - Guantanamo Bay, Cuba on my recent visit to that base, I left convinced that abuse definitely exists at the detention facilities. But not the slander and hyperbole about alleged mistreatment of the unlawful combatants confined there that we've all heard. There is far more serious abuse: the relentless, merciless attacks on American servicemen and women by these same terrorist thugs.

Many of the orange jumpsuit-clad detainees fight their captors at every opportunity. They attack guards whenever the soldiers enter their cells, trying to reach up under protective face masks to gouge eyes and tear mouths. They make weapons and try to stab the guards or grab and break limbs as the guards pass them food. These terrorist prisoners openly brag of their desire to kill Americans.

One has promised that if he is released he would find MPs in their homes through the Internet, break into their houses at night and 'cut the throats of them and their families like sheep.' These recalcitrant detainees are known euphemistically as being "non-compliant."

Yet these thugs are treated with an amazing degree of compassion: They are given ice cream treats and recreational time. They live in clean facilities, and receive a full Muslim religious package of Koran, prayer rug, beads, and prayer oils. An arrow in every cell points to Mecca. The call to prayer is played five times daily.

They are not abused, hanged, tortured, beheaded, raped, mutilated or in any way treated the way that they once treated their own captives or now treat their guards.

Former intelligence officer Wayne Simmons asked those in charge pointedly why we would allow a book like the Koran - that inflames and reinforces the jihadist mentality - even to be distributed to these people. "Doesn't giving them a Koran simply add fuel to an ideological fire already burning out of control?" Simmons asked. Those in charge were visibly surprised at the question. "Giving them the Koran is simply something that we think we ought to do as a humane gesture," said second-in-command Brigadier General Gong. "We're Americans. That's how we operate."

Our group went to GITMO to check out tales that the military was being too tough on these terrorist detainees. We left convinced that America is being extraordinarily lenient - some might even say too much so. But JTF GITMO commanding officer Brigadier General Jay Hood will have none of that. He radiated confidence and determination when fielding challenges from our group about lenient treatment. "It works," he says simply. "We do not allow torture or mistreatment, period." How do they guarantee this? By rigorous, on-going training and constant oversight up and down the supervisory chain. As proof that "establishing rapport" with the detainees is far more effective than coercive techniques, General Hood refers skeptics to the massive amount of usable intelligence information JTF GITMO continues to produce even three years into the program.

We dined with the soldiers, toured several of the individual holding camps, observed interrogations, and inspected cells. We were impressed by the universally high quality of the cadre and the facilities. While it may not be exactly "Club GITMO" that Rush Limbaugh uses to tweak the hard-left critics who haven't a clue about reality here, GITMO is a far cry from the harshness we would expect in a maximum security prison in the US.

For example, meals for detainees are ample: we lunched on what several thought was an accumulated single day's ration for detainees. "No," the contract food service manager said with a laugh, "what you're looking at there is today's lunch. A single meal. They get three a day like that." Several prisoners have special meal orders like "no tomatoes" or "no peanut products" depending on taste or allergies.

The detainees are similarly catered to medically. Almost every one arrived at GITMO with some sort of battlefield trauma. After all, the majority were captured in combat. Today they are healthy, immunized, and well cared for. At a visit to the modern hospital facility the doctor in charge confirmed that the caloric count for the detainees was so high that while "most detainees arrived undernourished," medics now watch for overweight and cholesterol issues.

Of the estimated 70,000 battlefield captures that were made in Afghanistan, only a tiny percentage, something on the order of 800-plus, were eventually evacuated to GITMO. These were the worst of the worst. More than 200 have been released because they are no longer a threat or possess no useful information. Even this has been proven overly generous: more than 10 released GITMO detainees have been killed or recaptured fighting Americans or have been identified as resuming terrorist activities.

You are right to worry about inhumane treatment taking place at GITMO. But your concern should be for the dedicated, well-trained, highly professional American men and women who are subjected to a daily barrage of feces, urine, semen, and spit hurled at them along with vile invective as they implement a humane, enlightened system of confinement on men who want nothing more than to kill Americans. These quiet professional Americans, who live under the motto "Honor Bound for Defense of Freedom," deserve our utmost respect and concern. Shame on anyone who slanders or disrespects them.

Gordon Cucullu is a former Green Beret lieutenant colonel and author of Separated at Birth: How North Korea became the Evil Twin.

In case you missed the actual text of the amendment -- it is so broad, open to interpretation, that we can't do anything to the terrorists.

S.AMDT.1977
Amends: H.R.2863
Sponsor: Sen McCain, John [AZ] (submitted 10/3/2005) (proposed 10/5/2005)

THE ACTUAL TEXT of the Amendment, GIVING THE TERRORIST DETAINEES FULL RIGHTS AND PROTECTION OF THE US CONSTITUTION ANYWHERE, EVEN OUTSIDE THE US AND CREATING US LAW BASED ON THE UN.

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/F?r109:1:./temp/~r109O2XG41:e911694:

(a) In General.--"No individual in the custody or under the physical control of the United States Government, regardless of nationality or physical location, shall be subject to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment.

(b) Construction.--Nothing in this section shall be construed to impose any geographical limitation on the applicability of the prohibition against cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment under this section.

(c) Limitation on Supersedure.--The provisions of this section shall not be superseded, except by a provision of law enacted after the date of the enactment of this Act which specifically repeals, modifies, or supersedes the provisions of this section.

(d) Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment Defined.--In this section, the term ``cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment'' means the cruel, unusual, and inhumane treatment or punishment prohibited by the Fifth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States, as defined in the United States Reservations, Declarations and Understandings to the United Nations Convention Against Torture and Other Forms of Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment done at New York, December 10, 1984. "

From Indymedia..LEFTY!!
Stephen N. Xenakis, a retired brigadier general

a retired Brigadier General asks: Why the silence from military medics?
by redjade Saturday, Feb 12 2005, 6:27pm

As a physician holding the title of brigadier general by the time I retired in 1998, I directed major medical support efforts during the 1991 Gulf War and have seen the Army leadership up close. So, as the scandals at Abu Ghraib in Iraq and Guantanamo in Cuba unfolded, I wondered why we had heard so little from the medics. When faced with the twin pressures of performing their military duty and providing treatment, did the staffs at these facilities turn a blind eye to the physical and mental torture inflicted on the prisoners, or perhaps even collude with interrogators? There are few other explanations for why they didn't report suspicious findings from the examinations of the detainees. Unless, of course, those reports were suppressed.

I've also wondered whether the senior medical leadership of the Army, Navy and Air Force knew of the abuses — and whether their reports could have been concealed.

[....]

With disturbing echoes of unsavory regimes in history, medics abdicated their responsibilities toward the detainees, their patients, instead of making interrogations more humane, more in keeping with international standards of decency.

Unlike soldiers, doctors have a duty to patients as well as country. That is what separates U.S. military physicians from the German doctors who aided the Nazis in concentration camps or, in perhaps a closer parallel, the South African prison doctors who examined anti-apartheid leader Steve Biko (a fellow physician no less), filed incomplete reports, deferred to police interrogators and failed to stop the brutal treatment that ended in Biko's death.

--
Stephen N. Xenakis, a retired brigadier general with the U.S. Army, now works as a child and adolescent psychiatrist at the Psychiatric Institute of Washington.

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