The simple fact of the matter is interrogation is supposed to be stressful or you will get no information. To put it another way, an interrogation without stress is not an interrogation - it is a conversation
, is a statement from the letter of Chief Warrant Officer Lewis Welshofer, who was convicted of negligent homicide in the death of Maj. Gen. Abed Hamed Mowhoush followed by a court-martial in January, 06. His letter to the court asking for clemency also shows that Welshofer still insists that he has done nothing wrong. In the same letter, he says that whatever he did was ‘within the appropriate constraints that both the rules of law, and just as importantly - duty, imposed on me.’
These documents won’t bring Gen. Abed Hamed Mowhoush back to life, may not bring Welshofer forgiveness but they do make us question the so called ‘rules of war’ and their decency. This case isn’t the only one; there have been a bundle of documents that project the heinous torture and crimes committed by U.S. soldiers against civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan. These documents were released by the American Civil Liberties Union ahead of a lawsuit, which dealt with 22 such incidents.
A few instances
• As a punishment for breaking a curfew, a man was pushed into Tigris by soldiers that resulted in his death due to drowning.
• Soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division have been convicted of killing detainees in Samarra, Iraq.
• Haditha witnessed brutal killings of 24 civilians by Marines.
• Suffocation of a former Iraqi general being questioned for helping insurgents. The man’s head was covered by a sleeping bag and his neck was winded with an electrical cord for a ’stress position’.
• Killing of a young teenager by 3 soldiers in Sadr City.
An attorney with the ACLU’s National Security Project, Nasrina Bargzie said that she believed abundance of information was being hidden from the public. ACLU has challenged that all the documents being released under the lawsuit must be released for the general public under federal law. When taken a look into the cases that follow the convictions, it is pretty clear that the undefined, unspecified terms of war, questioning and interrogations go in favor of soldiers who kill people as per their whims and fancies.
Source: MSNbc
Image credit: Sikhtimes
