“Enhanced” interrogation undermines American security and violates military values

Guest post by J.F. Murphy

J.F. Murphy is a former Marine infantry officer and Iraq veteran who graduated from the U.S. Navy's SERE program. He is a fellow of the Truman National Security Project.

Given the many stumbles we have experienced in our fight against global terrorism, it is crucial that we get the current debate on effective interrogation methods right. As a Marine who both served in Iraq and graduated from the Navy's Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) school, I believe that the "enhanced" techniques employed, which a reasonable person on both the American and the Arab street would think of as "torture," following 9/11 actually endanger the lives of American troops while also betraying the endurance and sacrifice of American prisoners of war from past conflicts.

Such techniques compromise American troops fighting overseas, both providing a recruiting tool that swells the ranks of terrorist forces and potentially misdirecting intelligence resources along false paths. Moreover, using interrogation techniques culled from SERE training, a highly effective military program, fails to honor the courage and endurance of the American service members on whose experience the SERE is based.

As Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair has pointed out, whatever intelligence may have been gained by enhanced techniques has been outweighed by the cost to our reputation, to our ability to win hearts and minds, and to our promotion of moderate voices in the Muslim world. Those who have served in Iraq experienced these costs in blood, as the Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay scandals prompted droves of angry young men to take up arms and join the anti-American insurgency. There is little reason to believe that subjecting terrorist operatives to cruel, inhuman or degrading practices, yields more or better intelligence than other methods.

Those who defend the use of overly aggressive methods assert that the only pertinent question is whether or not useful intelligence was collected. Just as important, however, is whether false intelligence has been obtained. If these interrogations produced false intelligence that led us astray and diverted resources in Iraq, Afghanistan, or globally, then these methods are worse than inefficient; they are counterproductive and ultimately undermine our national security.

Take the case of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, who described to his Egyptian captors a false link between Saddam and Al-Qaeda in order to avoid torture. Torture arguably contributed to the creation of a false premise that led us into an unnecessary war, distracting us from locating and destroying the real terrorist threat in Afghanistan.

As for the military's various SERE programs, they are predicated on the understanding that torture has been historically used and has proven most effective in producing false confessions, not effective military intelligence. Senator John McCain and many other American POW's during the Vietnam War "confessed" to various war crimes after being tortured. It's human nature to say whatever it takes to make the pain go away.

The military's various SERE programs implicitly recognize that these methods are not effective in producing quality intelligence. SERE is an outstanding training experience, a physically and psychologically grueling program rooted in the inspiring story of the men who endured isolation, pain, and suffering at the hands of the North Vietnamese. It gives American service members the confidence, knowledge, and skills required to survive the challenges of isolation in hostile environments and avoid giving false confessions.

It is ironic to learn that the knowledge and experience embodied in the SERE program – which was used heavily by those officials who pushed for "enhanced" interrogation techniques – has been used in ways that ultimately make our nation less secure. This is a betrayal of the experiences and courage of the service members who endured torture at the hands of our nation's enemies almost forty years ago.

And it's a betrayal of our mission to vanquish the enemies we face today to use self-defeating techniques that swell the ranks of terrorist organizations, undermine our moral authority, waste our intelligence resources, and ultimately make the nation less secure.