Thomas E. Ricks's Blog, page 49

The New York Times op-ed page owes our vets a large and immediate apology

By Jesse Sloman


Best Defense guest columnist

Kathleen Belew's New York
Times op-ed "Veterans and White Supremacy" has generated a fierce response for its attempt to connect
military service with membership in white supremacist groups. I hope that Dr.
Belew and the Times editorial staff
don't dismiss the palpable anger they've prompted in the veteran community as a
knee-jerk reaction to an unflattering portrayal. Instead, alongside a sense of
collective outrage at being subjected to tired and ill-informed stereotyping,
most of the criticism I've read has been sober, thoughtful, well-informed, and centered around the op-ed's analytical flaws and inadequate research.

First, despite some veiled implications, Dr. Belew fails to show
any empirical evidence of a causal relationship between military service and
membership in white supremacy groups. The closest she comes is her statement
that "the return of veterans from combat appears to correlate more closely with
Klan membership than any other historical factor." That is an extremely bold
assertion, one that arguably anchors her entire thesis, and it merits far more
than the brief two-sentence treatment she provides. In the absence of a
rigorous assessment of the available data, we are left to rely on Dr. Belew's
word that war has "fueled every surge in Ku Klux Klan membership in American
history, from the 1860s to the present." Given the enormous breadth of that
dataset, which seems to encompass everything from the armies of the Civil War
to the one-third minority volunteer force the United States fields today, it is
irresponsible of Dr. Belew to make such a far-reaching claim without spending
more time describing her methodology.

Second, as J.M. Berger has pointed out, Dr. Belew's thesis suffers from a framing problem. She very
persuasively argues that Vietnam veterans had an outsized role as leaders of
white supremacy groups from the 1970s to the 1990s. However, the fact that vets
once made up a disproportionate portion of Klan leadership does not also mean
that a disproportionate percentage of veterans are likely to become white
supremacists. Making that logical leap is akin to saying that because the vast majority of suicide bombings have been carried out by young men, young
men have a propensity to become suicide bombers. As Dr. Belew admits herself,
the number of Vietnam vets who participated in white supremacist groups was "a
tiny percentage of those who served" and "a vast majority of veterans are
neither violent nor mentally ill."

Finally, although Dr. Belew includes some menacing quotes from a 2009 Homeland Security intelligence
estimate and alleges that the threat the
report described "proved real," she provides no real-life example of an Iraq or
Afghanistan veteran committing violence after being radicalized by a white supremacist
group. She also fails to mention that the estimate lists just three citations
to back up its assessment of the veteran population, one of which is a 2008 FBI report which concludes that "some veterans of the conflicts in Iraq
and Afghanistan have joined the extremist movement. However, they have not done
so in numbers sufficient to stem declines among major national extremist
organizations.... Nor has their participation resulted in a demonstrably more
violent extremist movement."

There is room for a thoughtful and considered discussion about
the presence of veterans in white supremacist groups. I am not advocating that
we should ignore the ugly history of white extremism in certain segments of the Army in the 1990s, the former
soldier Wade Michael Page's murderous rampage in a Sikh temple in 2012, or pretend that some of the 23
million vets in America today aren't racists who belong to the KKK. However,
there is simply no evidence in this op-ed to support Dr. Belew's central claim
that there is anything more than a tangential link between membership in white
supremacist organizations and service in the U.S. military. To her credit, Dr.
Belew is more measured than the Times
editors. They chose to splash an inflammatory graphic beneath a misleading
title and go to press with little thought for the feelings of a veteran
community that is already reeling from poor reporting spurred by the Fort Hood
shooting.

A recent poll conducted by the Washington
Post and the Kaiser Family Foundation found that seven out of 10 veterans
"feel[s] that the average American routinely misunderstands their experience"
and "more than 1.4 million vets feel disconnected from civilian life." Dr.
Belew's op-ed makes that case with crystal clarity. Many Americans still view
veterans through a binary lens, sometimes as heroes, sometimes as monsters, but
seldom as the individuals we are. Dr. Belew and the Times should use their platforms to help expand our nation's
understanding of its servicemembers, not continue to narrow it.

Jesse Sloman is an officer in the U.S. Marine
Corps Reserve and a member of the Truman National Security Project's Defense
Council.

Cui bono? A perspective on our wars

By Capt. John Byron,
USN (Ret.)


Best Defense senior
peacenik

Below are tallied sound numbers from multiple sources
showing the basic cost of our two wars in dollars and human lives:

Iraq


U.S. Military Deaths/Wounded in
Action: 4,488/32,223


U.S. Contractors Deaths/Wounded
in Action: 3,418/17,105


Coalition Military Deaths/Wounded in Action: 318/842


Iraqi Military & Police Deaths/Wounded in Action:
10,819/30,375


Civilians Killed Directly: 136,000


Displaced Civilians: 2,800,000


Dollar Cost: $816 billion

Afghanistan


U.S. Military Deaths/Wounded in
Action: 2,168/18,255


U.S. Contractors Deaths/Wounded
in Action: 2,867/8,734


Coalition Military Deaths/Wounded in Action: 1,080/4,620


Afghan Military & Police Deaths/Wounded in Action:
10,655/30,471


Civilians Killed Directly: >15,000 (no accurate tally)


Displaced Civilians: 574,000


Dollar Cost: $709 billion

I have a simple question: Who has benefited from these wars?

Captain John Byron
(USN, Ret.), Best Defense's senior peacenik, served on continuous active duty for 37 years, commanding the submarine
USS Gudgeon and Naval
Ordnance Test Unit at Cape Canaveral.

The case for adding 74 sailors of the USS Frank E. Evans to the Vietnam Memorial

By Maj. Cameron Gallagher, U.S. Army


Best Defense guest columnist

In the early morning of June
3, 1969, the USS Frank E. Evans was
engaged in "Operation Sea Spirit" with more than 40 ships of the
Southeast Asia Treaty Organization. During the exercise, the Evans collided
with HMAS Melbourne, an Australian
carrier that ripped the American destroyer in two, killing 74 sailors.

The names of the "Lost 74" are not inscribed upon the
Vietnam Veterans Memorial wall because they were killed just outside the
designated combat zone, an area used by the Department of Defense (DOD) to
determine if an individual was a Vietnam conflict fatality.

Congressman Adam Schiff (D-CA) and The USS Frank E.
Evans Association both
disagree with DOD's decision to exclude the "Lost 74" from recognition on the
wall. They argue that the Evans
provided naval support fire for combat operations in Vietnam the month prior to
Operation Sea Spirit and claim that they were scheduled to return after the
exercise.

In addition, there is
precedence for granting exceptions to servicemembers who were killed outside of
the designated combat zone. One of the most famous occurred in 1983 when
President Ronald Reagan ordered that the names of 68 Marines who died on an
R&R flight outside of the combat zone be added to the Vietnam Veterans
Memorial.

As Memorial Day approaches
next month, we need to ask ourselves: why shouldn't we add the "Lost 74" to the
more than 58,000 names on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial?

 is the
story by ABC News on the "Lost 74."

MAJ Cameron Gallagher is an
AH-64D Apache aviator who served as a defense legislative fellow for Rep. Adam
Schiff (D-CA) in 2013. The opinions expressed in the article are solely those
of the author and do not reflect those of the U.S. government, the Department
of Defense, or the U.S. Army.

20 things about being a platoon leader that he wishes he knew way back when

Tom
note: This originally appeared in War Council, a fine blog out of
West Point. I am running it here with the permission of the author, who is in
Afghanistan, and of the blogkeeper.

By Lt. Scott Ginther, U.S.
Army


Best Defense guest columnist

After
ardently attempting once to write an essay on "what I know now that I wish I
knew then," I realized that writing even just a two or three paged paper is
something cadets do not want to read. This being said, when I was posed with
this task I swore I would do three things: 1) provide an honest answer, 2)
express the truth in the most unvarnished way possible, and 3) keep things
short. Therefore, I have decided to make a list that cadets can squeeze in
between their class and sports demands, and their beloved naps and "Not Being
At West Point" time.

1.     
You're not going to be the greatest Platoon Leader
Ever
-- This is hard to come to grips with for new lieutenants. Especially
considering the competitive spirit among most West Pointers -- and Soldiers
at-large. The reality is most Soldiers in your future platoons will have
between 5-12 platoon leaders before they become Sergeants First Class. Chances
are they've had someone better than you. This is not a knock on personal talent
or capability, but rather a matter of perspective. Excluding outliers, most new
platoon leaders have zero experience in the Army. You are there to learn and
make yourself better, not be the subject matter expert.

2.     
You may not be the greatest, but you're the most
responsible
-- Again, this is another facet that is hard to come to terms with. You may not
be the most experienced in terms of tactics, time or doctrine, but you're the
only one that has been formally trained on leading. Your job is to take
responsibility. You are the best qualified member of your platoon to pull your
Soldiers together collectively and make things happen. You control your own
consequences.

3.     
"Should" is the most dangerous word in the Army -- As a
lieutenant when your PSG, XO, CO and especially your Soldiers ask you questions
- no matter how important - you cannot respond with "It should be done already,
sir." Or, "We should be at this grid coordinate." Check on things and get
oversight so you don't have to say "I should not have done that, sir."

4.     
Don't be tougher than you have to but don't be
indulgent either
-- If you try and John Wayne your way through PL time and you're really more of
a Woody Allen, your Soldiers will instantly see your ruse and not respond to
you. Be YOURSELF.

5.     
Most of the time you'll have no idea what you're
doing
-- This cold bucket of water is strange and uncomfortable at first, but you'll
have many tasks assigned to you at once that you're going to have no idea where
to start. I have gotten farther on problems just by deciding to dig in somewhere
and not stop working or asking questions until circumstances become clear. You
WILL figure things out. Turn off your $250,000 educated-brain for a second and
stop arriving at the conclusion that the world is going to end because of you. Just
close your eyes, grit your teeth and clear the jump door.

6.     
Your parents probably did a better job prepping you
for leadership than anyone -- If your parents taught you to get along with
everybody as a kid, work in school, made you clean your room, be home by curfew
and they trusted you, you'll be alright. Being a good, honest person has gotten
me much farther in my relationships in the Army than I ever expected.

7.     
West Pointers are spoiled -- Yes you are.
Even if you're the nicest most considerate person in the world, you won't
realize the gift and legacy West Point is bestowing on you until well after
you've graduated. The organizational infrastructure and support -- let alone
the Ivy League quality education - is something that can't be matched. There's
a reason why West Point ranks in Forbes
magazine's top five universities in the country on nearly a consecutive basis. Don't
squander the opportunities you have because of the infamous "cadet cynicism." This
Academy has been in business for 200+ years.

8.     
Start ruck marching -- Do it a lot,
and do it often. Especially if you plan on branching infantry, no one really
cares how much you can bench. Your Soldiers are going to care how far you can
take them in the disgusting, soupy Georgia heat and humidity with Banana
Spiders hanging in the vines in front of your face. Furthermore, bench pressing
is not going to get you your "Go" at Ranger School anyway. The mountains of
Dahlonega are unforgiving to body builders and top heavy guys.

9.     
Band of Brothers, Black Hawk Down, The Unforgiving Minute and other sources -- Just because
you read these books and saw these movies doesn't make you an expert on warfare
or the next Chris Kyle or Mike Murphy. Furthermore, these sources are not the
benchmarks for which you should measure the fallibility of tactical or
technical opinions and TTPs of others around you. These are personal accounts
and reflections on leadership, personal challenges and demons, and should
supplement your development as a leader, Soldier and as a person.

10. 
Don't focus on being a badass -- Focus on
being the PL your Soldiers need you to be. Finding, fixing and finishing the
enemies of the United States with extreme prejudice is awesome, but as an
officer, you're not a trigger puller. Your main weapon system is thirty-five to
forty other trigger pullers. Learn when to be a hard-ass and when to be a human
being, I suggest reading Eric Greitens' book, The Heart and the Fist.

11. 
Stop being "slugs" -- I absolutely hated this at
West Point. I never understood why people would voluntarily go to USMA, just to
become soft and do the bare minimum. You're setting the tone for the rest of
your Army career to be rather unenjoyable and you're screwing over your future
Soldiers. Get out now.

12. 
Stop being "brutal" -- I also
absolutely hated this at West Point. I never understood the "tool-bags" working
their asses off just to gain praise from the administration. Being a good West
Pointer is NOT the same as being a good Army Officer. Success bred from
arrogance is not success at all.

13. 
Stop the division between "good" cadets and "bad"
cadets
-- Like I said before, being a good West Pointer does not equate to being a
good Army Officer. Work on your weaknesses now because they'll be amplified in
the Army. Work together as a class! You WILL run into your classmates and other
West Pointers that know who you are all the time. If you're a an arrogant
"tool" now, and you get paired up with that "slug" you hated when you move on
to Ranger School, you're both going to have to earn each other's tabs, or go
home empty handed. Moreover, the RI's know who you are and they can see this.

14. 
Take time to learn your school's history -- I feel that
if West Point (and cadets) as an institution did a better job of this early on,
I think cadets would have a better understanding of a.) what they are getting
into, and b.) a deeper appreciation of their Academy. We all know the big
names, battles and events throughout USMA's history; but just barely. These
pivotal events and monumental men are often relegated to lofty figures and
dates in history books, not a living part of each cadet's heritage. Doing this
will help you figure out why you decided to come (or stay) at West Point in the
first place.

15. 
Since when did Microsoft Xcel become a leadership
tool?
-- This is a huge pet peeve of mine. When I was a cadet, I saw way too many
kids immediately go to computers, spreadsheets and power point to solve
problems. Yes, these are skills you will use at nausea when you're a
lieutenant, but get outside of your own head and go work with your Soldiers. Memos,
briefings and trackers can only get you so far. Everyday interactions with
Soldiers ultimately enforce and set standards.

16. 
Your Soldiers will do stupid things -- I always
heard this as a cadet, but I didn't realize how stupid things could get. I
can't delve into examples without long stories, but be prepared to encounter
circumstance you thought only happened in the movies.

17. 
Your Soldiers will do amazing things -- Far more
often than your Soldiers doing stupid things, you will be blown away at how
talented they are. I have the following Soldiers in my platoon: a former
blacksmith and rodeo clown, a NASCAR pit crewman, two carpenters, a private who
is a multi-millionaire and drives and Audi R8, a Sugar Bowl-winning, University
of West Virginia offensive lineman and a SSG who graduated college at 17 years
old and taught physics at Tulane before the age of 26.

18. 
Lieutenants will do stupid things -- This issue
often gets swept under the rug. I understand that as brand new lieutenants you
will do every day stupid things; it's expected of you in your learning
experience. But more and more often I'm seeing or hearing of lieutenants doing
inexcusably stupid things that land them in prison and out of the Army. Every
incident I've seen or heard involves alcohol.

19. 
NCOs will help you not do stupid things -- Everyday I
am completely blown away by how hardworking, and professional this brassy,
prideful group can be. Sergeants indeed run the Army. Your platoon can function
without you, but it cannot function without NCOs. For the umpteenth time, trust your NCOs. You do not know more
than they do, this is their Army not yours, officers just get to drive it for
awhile.

20. 
Friends of yours are going to die (and not
necessarily in combat) -- This won't necessarily happen in combat. Fortunately
I've only had three friends of mine killed throughout my Army career. Surprisingly
though, only one was in combat, he was not a West Pointer. 2LT Justin Lee
Sisson was my best friend and the best lieutenant I've ever seen. He was a
Florida State grad, prior service and Ranger and Sapper qualified. The
Motorcycle VBIED that hit him didn't discern between how well trained he was or
where he came from. This job is very, very real. Don't wait to realize this
until you are looking at your best friend's mother at his funeral.

I
hope this list will be worth all cadets' time and they can relate to it. A
message to cadets everywhere: Please -- above all things -- take personal
accountability of your personal development. It will not be long before you
have to "grow up" and do things on your own and be proactive.

1LT Scott Ginther (USMA '11) was a proud member of the West
Point Boxing Team and member of cadet company A-2. He is currently a Platoon
Leader with A Co., 1-504th PIR, 1BCT, 82nd ABN DIV. This
is an unofficial expression of opinion; views expressed are those of the
author and not necessarily those of the U.S. Military Academy, Department of
the Army, the Department of Defense, or any agency of the U.S. government.

Another vote for the Army as the nation's primary service in coming decades

Not the Navy Department, nor the
Air Force, say these authors. Rather, they contend:

The argument that the
military must retain the ability to "fight and win the Nation's wars" when
shaping operations are resourced as lesser included capabilities is incongruous
with current national security strategy aspirations. And it is not realistic to
expect the whole-of-government engagement capability to increase given the
current fiscal environment. The argument to limit resource expenditures,
however, is compelling in light of U.S. fiscal circumstances. Faced with a
volatile operating environment, austere resources, and an ambiguous group of
adversaries, the Nation must strive for dynamic equilibrium as it adapts the
joint force to win conflicts, manage security environments, and shape civil
order within constrained resources. The new security culture must embrace the
military's "shape" and "win" roles. Shaping operations are primarily landpower
centric because they are conducted in the human domain among the people. The
Army must and will carry the burden of successfully executing shaping
operations in support of America's foreign policy security goals.

What not to do when seeing a big ship in your path while entering the Persian Gulf

A
couple of things struck me from this audio from the bridge of the
minutes leading up to the USS Porter's collision with a Japanese
tanker
back in 2012. First, it sounds like no one is in charge. Second, when the
skipper asks someone a question, it is taken as an order. Third, I wonder why
during four minutes there is no attempt to contact the other ship in ways besides the
horn -- say, radio, flashing lights, and flares.

"Bridge communications were
atrocious," commented retired Navy Capt. John Byron after listening to the
audio. "A good skipper wants a quiet bridge and a good OOD insists on it."

Speaking
of the Navy, here is a good story about the difficult
decisions facing an F-18 pilot after a refueling mishap.

Anatomy of a crime: Some reflections on the latest killings at Fort Hood

By John T. Kuehn,
Ph.D.


Best Defense
guest columnist

In
a 2005 meeting with the faculty at the Command and General Staff College (CSGC),
a senior Army mental health professional acknowledged how woefully unprepared
the Army mental health personnel and facilities were for the drastic increase
in the numbers of people needing help for combat related stress ailments,
including Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). At Fort Leavenworth, for
example, there were about three to four counselors and therapists for an army
community of several thousands, including nearly 1,400 field grade officers at
CGSC -- most of whom had at least one combat deployment in either Iraq or
Afghanistan, many more than one. The crisis was clear, the Army was unprepared,
DOD was unprepared, but the first step to recovery is acknowledging that one
has a problem.

Fast-forward
to 2007. Same meeting, same location, and now the Army had maybe five or six
mental health professionals on the post with the training and education to
handle combat stress problems -- still the same problem, only the population
was even more at risk, more likely than not suffering from combat stress, PTSD
in some cases. The programs were inadequate, although attempts would soon be
made to help build up something the Army called "resilience." The Army had also
finally decided to let its personnel exclude mental health counseling for
combat stress from its security questionnaire as "Having ever been treated
for a mental disorder," but most of the students had not seen this
announcement and did not trust the institution to NOT count mental health
counseling against them even when they learned of it. Problem still there,
getting bigger, and still nothing "heroic" -- as they say in the
medical community -- going on to solve it.

Then
came November 2009. Nidal Hasan murdered and wounded dozens of fellow soldiers
at Fort Hood, Texas. More evidence that the measures taken to solve the mental
health catastrophe in the armed forces were at best inadequate and, in Hasan's
case, ruinously counterproductive. The goal to hire more mental health
professionals had run into the problem of what is called quality control for
these same professionals. The system in place to monitor, accredit, and hold
them accountable, as well as their raters accountable, had been exposed as
inadequate, to say the least. As an aside, a family member discharged honorably
from the Army (in 2011), but with alcohol problems and problems with depression
(not related to combat, he served in Korea), was being managed not with
counseling and therapy, but with drugs. Another family member, a veteran social
worker with over 30 years of experience, could not get hired by the Veterans
Administration due to bureaucratic red tape and the lack of a sense of urgency
about this problem (in the last five years), despite public pronouncements that
the military medical branches were trying to hire more talent to help with the
problem. The military claims a shortage of health care workers? It hired people
like Hasan to alleviate a growing mental health epidemic related to combat
stress?

Okay,
so the military and DOD got its act together after the first Fort Hood
shooting, right? It would seem not. April 2, 2014 -- still not enough workers,
still managing people with drugs rather than one-on-one therapy and aggressive
command support for professionally-led support groups, still underfunding the effort,
still not properly monitoring the personnel in the system providing the care, still
with hands over its eyes about a problem that certainly is not going to go
away. Now, again at Fort Hood, where the warning klaxons went off about as
loudly as they could over four years ago, a mentally disturbed soldier kills
three of his comrades and wounds another 16, and then turns the gun on himself.

No
matter what the investigations and finger pointing will reveal, this is also a
crime by a macho, tough-it-out culture and the larger society that created it
-- a society that routinely abandons its mentally ill citizens to homelessness
on the streets and to "management" with drugs. Problem solved. No,
problem not solved. To know there is
a problem and not solve it is a crime of omission AND commission. This second
Fort Hood shooting reveals a national crime against our own -- by us, by the
bureaucrats, by the leadership of DOD that should be resourcing its mental
health community -- embattled, understaffed and overworked -- and by the larger
medical community itself for not standing up and speaking truth to power about
its inadequate resources and internal policing.

For
shame -- on all of us. We should all refuse to remain silent any longer.

John T. Kuehn
teaches military history and is a retired naval aviator. Prior to joining the
Navy in 1981 he worked for over seven years in hospitals, mental hospitals, alcohol
and drug detoxification centers, and with the developmentally challenged. The
views are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or
position of the Department of the Army, Department of Defense, or the U.S.
Government.

Drone news from all over: Google goes high altitude, a drone truck is coming, and Bezos still wants drone groceries

Lotsa action in the
world of drones. Or maybe I am just noticing them more because I am working
with Peter Bergen and Bailey Cahall, who know so much about all this stuff that
they could ride drones to work if they wanted to.

First, Google
yesterday elbowed aside Facebook and bought Titan Aerospace, a company that specializes in developing
solar-powered, high-altitude, extremely long loiter (that is, years) drones. I
wrote in December that I thought Google would become the nation's largest
military supplier one day, but I think that may happen sooner than I think. The
difference is that it and other companies won't develop military products and
then convert them. Rather, the military is going to have to adapt (and try to
keep up with) civilian developments.

Speaking of never
landing, here is a drone that gets its power from power lines.

Also, someone is
developing a flying truck drone. At the other end of the scale, here is a 40 mm drone launcher.

Meanwhile, in Syria,
both sides are using drones against each other.

And don't forget
poor old Jeff Bezos. He still plans to deliver your groceries by drone. Or your newspaper?

Think you know something about Putin's bad intentions? Then give ODNI a call

Could be there's a fat
job open for you at ODNI: Deputy National
Intelligence Officer, Russia & Eurasia. I promise you it won't be
boring. Some travel required. Oddly enough, the linked
announcement says the contact address is on Baccarat Drive in Fairfax,
which is kind of weird, because Google Earth fotos show that said road is a
short residential street.

I wonder why these Russian intel jobs keep vacating.

On the upside, there
are some really good Chinese and Korean places just down the road on Va. Rte. 236. So lunches would
be fun.

Comment of the day: CIA torturers are the moral equivalent of the North Vietnamese jailkeepers who tortured American pilots

I was intrigued by this
comment, by "USAF Pilot-RET," which ran the other day in response to my post saying that if CIA officials want to
practice civil disobedience,
they should man up and take the consequences of civil disobedience:

During the end of
the Vietnam war, I was the operational head of the USAF Resistance to Captivity
program at Fairchild AFB. There we taught combat crew-members measures to
resist interrogation and exploitation in captivity. Prior to my combat tour, I
had previously undergone such training at Fairchild [our class swore to a man
that they would never return to that base and several claimed they would not
eject over North Vietnam but would rather "ride it in" -- as some
pilots did, according to reports].

We
exposed our students to brief, but clearly non-Geneva Conventions treatment
[including sensory deprivation and approaching physical torture] that
incorporated lessons learned from previous wars [especially Soviet prisons
& Korea POWs], early Vietnam returnees, and the best intelligence available
to us from the DOD and CIA.

All
training was supervised by an O-3 or O-4 who was NOT involved in the training
scenarios but rather acted as an observer to insure that: 1) the training
didn't get out of hand, 2) that the training was effective, and 3) to provide
records used in debriefing the students after they recovered from the rigors
imposed by our training.

Three
things became abundantly clear to me during that time based on: 1) my
experience supervising [and formally studying the effects of our training on
our students], 2) from the unclassified and classified literature that I avidly
followed, and 3) from my many conversations with former USAF and Navy POWs,
several of whom became my personal friends.

1. This business of
guards whose job is to abuse captives takes a terrible moral toll on the guards
as well as the captives. There is a rich and abundant contemporary theoretical
and empirical literature to support this claim. Conditions or war exacerbate
and intensify these perverse processes just as they insure that the inevitable
negative consequences tarnish our nation. See Abu Ghraib and related consequences
and reflect on how our programmatic torture "helped" our ongoing
efforts in the Middle East. 

2.
The vast body of evidence clearly indicates that non-torture interrogation and
internment strategies produce vastly more and better intelligence and yield
positive rather than negative propaganda. View the movie "Taxi to the Dark
Side" and compare the FBI interrogator with the army dolts who took the
fall for their superiors. Then read a representative sample of empirical
literature on successful long-term interrogation strategies. But of course that
would require intellectual curiosity to replace ideology.

3.
That the "V" tortured US prisoners of war, provided us with about the
only lasting positive propaganda from that failed national effort. It gave us
the fig-leaf to "Return with Honor" at the end of a war in which much
of the non-nuclear forces of the US were soundly defeated by a third-world
country. 

My private view -- one
I shared with savvy peers, informed superiors, and my POW friends [but not
widely, nor publically with the POW community] was that the North Vietnamese
did us a huge favor by torturing our guys -- my peers -- rather than treat them
properly (but unexpectedly) according to the Geneva Conventions. They
would have gotten far more US POW cooperation, intelligence, and great
propaganda.

So
I agree with Ricks completely; and I
equate the present CIA torture apologists (and their political masters) with
the thugs in North Vietnam.