(via Josh Marshall)
One disadvantage the administration forgot about private contractors versus the military: Contractors can talk to the press without necessarily ruining their careers. And Torin Nelson, who worked as a contractor in both Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib, and named as a witness but not a suspect in the Taguba report, has talked to the Guardian.
Nelson was involved in reviewing the detainees at Guantamo for release. He estimates that “a third or more” at the detainees at Guantanamo had no connection to terrorism, and many “should never have been sent over there” and failing that, should have been released much sooner.
And he says there are indeed systemic problems with detention and interrogation in Iraq:
A unit goes out on a raid and they have a target and the target is not available; they just grab anybody because that was their job,” Mr Nelson said, referring to counter-insurgency operations in Iraq. “The troops are under a lot of stress and they don’t know one guy from the next. They’re not cultural experts. All they want is to count down the days and hopefully go home.
“I’ve read reports from capturing units where the capturing unit wrote, ‘the target was not at home.The
neighbour came out to see what was going on and we grabbed him’,” he said.Interrogators “weren’t interested in going through the less glamorous work of sifting through the chaff to get to the kernels of truth from the willing detainees; they were interested in ‘breaking’ tough targets”, he said.
Much of the problem lay in the quality of the interrogators, Mr Nelson said; only the youngest and least experienced intelligence officers actually question detainees.
CACI is still hiring, by the way. “Minimal supervision”! Sounds good to me.
Finally, this article speaks more generally about the problems with private contractors in Iraq. The first of which seems to be that no one in the government seems to know what the hell’s going on. They’re still working on the rules that govern contractors’ behavior, though there are close to 20,000 of them (naturally, no one knows the exact number) and they’re apparently interrogating prisoners and giving orders to soldiers. They still haven’t located the contract that CACI was working under in Abu Ghraib:
The contract with CACI International Inc. is one example. An Army report on alleged abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad says a CACI interrogator lied to investigators and ordered soldiers to abuse prisoners.
Pentagon officials said Thursday they have not determined which agency oversees the contract, which originally was with the Premier Technology Group, a smaller company providing contract interrogators that CACI bought last May.
“We haven’t been able to find anyone who knows what contract that was,” said Deborah Parker, a spokeswoman for the Army’s Intelligence and Security Command. Parker said her agency did not hire any contract interrogators.
All of this makes me feel like Frank Costanza on Seinfeld. Serenity now. Serenity now….
“One disadvantage the administration forgot about private contractors versus the military: Contractors can talk to the press without necessarily ruining their careers.”
But perhaps that is good for us.
But perhaps that is good for us.
Elaborate, please.
That was sarcastic, I’m all for whistleblowing in situations where it’s richly deserved. But it’s swamped by the other problems. If we can’t get a much better handle on contractors than this, we shouldn’t use them. Even the big service contracts like Halliburton’s….it’s a “natural monopoly”, with all sorts of hard to plan out contigencies; that’s not necessarily a good candidate for privatization even if it’s handled much better than this.
And I don’t think we should ever use them to carry out military operations or interrogate prisoners.
Katherine,
Serenity now. Serenity now….
Are you saying that contractors are not sponge worthy? :>
While I don’t mean to seem insensitive, the sad truth of the matter is that seizure and detainment is a heckuva lot more humane than blowing up their neighborhood.
As long as they maintain combatant status they are legitimate targets.
The problem, Katherine, is that these folks are wholly illiterate. In Vietnam 8 out of 10 captured communist fighters thought they were fighting for their independence. In Iraq, who knows what lines are being fed to these insurgents? They may tell them that the US is going to stay forever or make it an US territory. After the reaction to the redesigned flag emerged it would be easy for them to be told that the US wants to make a state sympathetic to Israel and Allah forbid, Jews!
The Guardian is about as accurate as Bünte – meaning it is slanted as far left as it can go without turning upside down. Anti-Americanism fuels these pieces and I’m surprised at how easily swayed the masses are who read them. Emotion is used to sway the reedlike minds who can twist in the wind and conform to the writer’s view with nary a neuron fired in self defense.
Some Americans feel uncultured and as a result are closet Anglophiles or Europhiles. These folks listen to the BBC and the Guardian as if they were the Gospel or perhaps the agnostic Gospel. It would be nice if everyone had European relations so one could hear firsthand their shallow and distorted views of America and US foreign policy.
Soldiers and contractors on the battlefield and on the fronts are put in hard positions and are not necessarily the brightest group when viewed collectively. As a result, it is almost akin to intellectual prejudice to condemn all of them for the actions of a few who are almost guaranteed to be found with less than sterling discipline.
I appreciate your concern, and your genuinely humanitarian views are laudable, but you have to put the affair and the efforts in greater context.
SDAI-Tech1
“The problem, Katherine, is that these folks are wholly illiterate. […] I appreciate your concern, and your genuinely humanitarian views are laudable, but you have to put the affair and the efforts in greater context.”
The lesson, we learn, is that being brighter and more literate is the road to correct appraisal.
Without in the least saying we’re there, or are anywhere near — because I don’t believe we remotely are, and, let me repeat, I don’t believe we remotely are, and did I mention that I don’t believe we remotely are? — that lesson didn’t serve well in Germany in 1933, nor Russia in 1917.
Doing what’s right doesn’t require being “the brightest group when viewed collectively.”
But thanks for speaking up against that intellectual prejudice. I appreciate your concern. I’m just trying to put the affair in greater context.
Thanks Gary, I enjoyed that!
As for 1917, the Bolsheviks were the supposed intelligentsia tearing down the evil Tsar & capitalists corrupted by westerners. So you’re right on that one.
I don’t know if Hitler’s 1933 National Socialists could be counted as intelligentsia though – I think most of the early Nazis were made up of failed artists, out-of-work hoodlums and disgruntled soldiers.
😉