On Combat

Recent news on America’s use of torture has resurfaced a searing debate that defines who we are, what we stand for, and what price we’re willing to pay for security:

“Secret U.S. Endorsement of Severe Interrogations”
New York Times
October 4, 2007

By SCOTT SHANE, DAVID JOHNSTON and JAMES RISEN

WASHINGTON, Oct. 3 — When the Justice Department publicly declared torture “abhorrent” in a legal opinion in December 2004, the Bush administration appeared to have abandoned its assertion of nearly unlimited presidential authority to order brutal interrogations.

But soon after Alberto R. Gonzales ’s arrival as attorney general in February 2005, the Justice Department issued another opinion, this one in secret. It was a very different document, according to officials briefed on it, an expansive endorsement of the harshest interrogation techniques ever used by the Central Intelligence Agency .

The new opinion, the officials said, for the first time provided explicit authorization to barrage terror suspects with a combination of painful physical and psychological tactics, including head-slapping, simulated drowning and frigid temperatures. . . .

The use of torture demeans America and Americans. It undermines the values we stand for. When I was shot down over Iraq in 1991, I expected to be tortured by my Iraqi captors. I was.

Once in the hands of what he or she considers to be ultimate power and ultimate evil, an American prisoner of war relies on training (for tools to resist coercion), faith in one’s comrades (to come get you), faith in America (that you will not be forgotten and your family will be taken care of), and faith in God (for personal strength).  The individual’s well of strength ebbs and flows between hopes for the future and the depths of despair when facing torture and isolation. A powerful reservoir of strength comes from the knowledge that one is on the side of right, on the side of rules, on the side of good. I expected to be tortured because I was in the hands of the bad guys. As I was beaten, I had a sense of moral superiority over brutal men who had a monopoly on physical power in the interrogation room. This moral superiority came from the knowledge that we were the good guys. We didn’t treat our prisoners that way. We were better than they were. We cannot ever afford to give that up.

Bill Andrews

Col USAF

POW Operation Desert Storm