{"id":4955,"date":"2008-12-01T07:08:31","date_gmt":"2008-12-01T06:08:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=4955"},"modified":"2008-12-01T07:08:31","modified_gmt":"2008-12-01T06:08:31","slug":"former-interrogator-slams-torture-torture-has-cost-nearly-as-many-lives-as-911","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/war-terrorism\/former-interrogator-slams-torture-torture-has-cost-nearly-as-many-lives-as-911\/","title":{"rendered":"Former interrogator slams torture: Torture has cost nearly as many lives as 9\/11"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"authorname\">By <a href=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\/author\/Ali\">Ali Frick<\/a><\/span> | In a Washington Post op-ed today, a former Special Operations interrogator who worked in Iraq in 2006 sharply criticizes American torture techniques as ineffective and dangerous. \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/article\/2008\/11\/28\/AR2008112802242.html?hpid=opinionsbox1\">Torture and abuse cost American lives<\/a>,\u201d he writes:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>I learned in Iraq that the No. 1 reason foreign fighters flocked there to fight were the abuses carried out at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Our policy of torture was directly and swiftly recruiting fighters for al-Qaeda in Iraq.<\/strong> \u2026 It\u2019s no exaggeration to say that at least half of our losses and casualties in that country have come at the hands of foreigners who joined the fray because of our program of detainee abuse. <strong>The number of U.S. soldiers who have died because of our torture policy will never be definitively known, but it is fair to say that it is close to the number of lives lost on Sept. 11, 2001.<\/strong> How anyone can say that torture keeps Americans safe is beyond me \u2013 unless you don\u2019t count American soldiers as Americans.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The writer, who used a pseudonym for the article, adds that when he switched his team\u2019s techniques to a rapport-building method, they found enormous success. One detainee told the author, \u201cI thought you would torture me, and when you didn\u2019t, I decided that everything I was told about Americans was wrong. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/article\/2008\/11\/28\/AR2008112802242.html?hpid=opinionsbox1\">That\u2019s why I decided to cooperate<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><!-- post updates would go here in theory --><\/p>\n<div class=\"post_update\"><span>Update<\/span>The author, who is writing a book on his experiences as an interrogator, notes that the Pentagon tried to redact non-classified information and block parts of his book. &#8220;Apparently, some members of the military command are not only unconvinced by the arguments against torture; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/article\/2008\/11\/28\/AR2008112802242_2.html?hpid=opinionsbox1\">they don&#8217;t even want the public to hear them<\/a>,&#8221; he writes.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Ali Frick | In a Washington Post op-ed today, a former Special Operations interrogator who worked in Iraq in 2006 sharply criticizes American torture techniques as ineffective and dangerous. \u201cTorture and abuse cost American lives,\u201d he writes: I learned in Iraq that the No. 1 reason foreign fighters flocked there to fight were the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1616,16],"tags":[51,49],"class_list":{"0":"post-4955","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-usa-news","7":"category-war-terrorism","8":"tag-torture","9":"tag-usa-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4955","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4955"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4955\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4955"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4955"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4955"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}