heat with 70 pounds of body armor and weaponry can be a bit taxing. I guess it helps me earn my meals, since the majority of my job here as an interrogator is intellectual (i.e., on my rear).
Today was my first day at the interrogation center, and my first impression was: I hate this job. But I worked through it and stayed on to get accustomed to my surroundings. I met the chaplain as well, he’s Assemblies of God, and seems like a really great man. I told him I could sing, so I’m thinking he may have me do a special music sometime.
love,
joshua
FROM JOSHUA
SENT 06/25/2004 9:34 A.M.
TO HOME
SUBJECT RE: GLAD YOU MADE IT SAFELY
I guess now it’s been about a week since I arrived to the Fertile Crescent, but for some reason it feels like it’s been months. I left Fort Gordon, Georgia, at about 10 a.m. eastern time, driving by charter bus to Atlanta.
Atlanta being our first “layover,” although we had yet to fly anywhere, most of us were all anxiously looking forward to the traditional “two beers in transit” before taking off. But our Movement NCOIC (Noncommissioned Officer in Charge) SFC Smith spent three years as a basic-training drill sergeant, and he had no problem nixing our creature comforts. I, being pretty bent on having my beer, and making a little drama out of our “deprivation,” ordered a St. Pauli’s Girl nonalcoholic, and then invited SFC Smith to sit next to me. He gasped, thinking I’d simply ignored his order, but then laughed once he saw I’d ordered an NA.
After a two-hour layover in Germany, we re-boarded the plane and headed to Kuwait. I read my evening office of prayer from my newly received 1928 Book of Common Prayer/KJV Bible (thanks, Hannah!) and then continued in some reading of Hans Küng on the history of the Catholic Church. But that academic philosophical world of mine seemed to fade by the time I heard the captain state that we were flying over Baghdad. I looked out my window to see a patchwork of lights below, scattered loosely throughout the desert. And I forgot Professor Küng and his Church. One hour later we touched down in Kuwait.
The door to the plane opened to a pleasant warmth outside, which was surprising because I expected to be overtaken by blankets of heat. The short bus ride to Doha was littered with sporadic fires of oil fields in the distance, white-clad wedding parties along roadsides, and sands that extended in all directions.
Once our names were finally called off on the flight manifest to head to Ali Al Saleem Airfield, we loaded another bus and headed toward the gate . . . then the bus slowed to a halt. I heard a rather confused bus driver say, “Mu aref, mu aref al tariq.” Someone asked for a translator so I stepped to the front to figure out what had happened. As it turned out, our bus driver was one week on the job, just in from Turkey. And between the Arabic and Turkish I was able to make out, he knew just about nothing about just about everything in the area, not to mention that our US Army escort had been told just to show up to the bus, bring his weapon and ammo, and not to worry, “the drivers know where they are going.”
So, with map in hand, I had to play navigator and interpreter all at once. “Well, let’s get to it, you didn’t learn Arabic for nothing,” I told myself. And, after a rather bumpy “oh, we were supposed to take that exit” kind of ride, we finally arrived at Ali Al Saleem Airfield out in the Kuwaiti boonies. By this time I was pretty accustomed to the Middle Eastern heat, but when I realized that the 89 degree (F) tent we waited in felt completely frigid, I knew I wasn’t in Kansas anymore.
We arrived to the Baghdad International Airport just shortly after sunrise and waited until early afternoon for the convoy that would take us to the Abu Ghraib prison, about ten miles west of Baghdad. We were met by a three-vehicle convoy: one truck and two “gunships” (Humvees with .50 cal machine guns mounted on top). We suited up in our body armor, Kevlar helmets, extra ammunition, etc., locked and loaded our M16 rifles and received a briefing from the Army captain, who told us of the current threat level, the history of past convoy ambushes, and that if we ever moved our M16 selector levers from “safe” to “semi” automatic, we were to shoot to kill. My eyes were wide open on that drive, to say the least, and Toto and Auntie Em were nowhere to be found. Thanks be to God, we all made it safely to the prison, where I have begun my new existence.
I have been on the job at the interrogation center now for about five days, and I really love my work. I am not at liberty to discuss many details, but what I can say is that there are plenty of detainees here who are simply no joke. Some of the most unsavory of individuals committing indiscriminate acts (even against fellow Muslims) have passed through these walls. We released many detainees over the past three months (approx. three to four thousand), and with the ones remaining I play an integral role in getting to the bottom of incredibly heinous acts. And for those who are being held unjustly, I play an active role in their release, and can quite often form congenial relations with them (although actual friendships are obviously a little past the line of what is proper, or safe for the detainee).
Much has changed since the controversy, some for good and some for ill. Apart from the much-needed changes regarding detainee abuse, of which my colleagues know next to nothing, the knee-jerk reaction to ensure the world knows we obey the law has made things slightly difficult. There is a lot of discouragement on the part of interrogators, especially when known terrorists or criminals are across the table from us, and we are nearly impotent as to the level of surveillance authorized, authority to segregate/isolate, etc. There are those on Capitol Hill who, on the one hand, desire “victory” in the “war on terror” and then, on the other hand, would have us just offer the terrorists tea and cigarettes to tell us where bin Laden and Zarqawi are. This of course is absurd, being that al-Qaida operatives are trained to resist interrogation and to expect torture. Our “prison” probably seems like a resort. I’m not sure what is being reported in the US currently about Abu Ghraib, but conditions are pretty cush for our detainees.
I see my job much more as a father confessor than an interrogator. As a confessor you cannot coerce a person to reveal that which they wish to hide. A confessor’s aim is to help the one confessing to be sincere, to arrive at the kind of contrition that actually desires self-disclosure—and to that end, empathy and understanding go a long way. No one actually wants secrecy, to carry the memory of shameful actions alone. A confessor provides the opportunity for a safe disclosure, offers a way out of secrecy. Interrogation is like a chess match, a battle of wits. But it is also a relationship of understanding, where I try to use a person’s internal belief scheme to encourage them to narrate dishonorable actions with their own words. This tactic takes far more time and patience, but is far more effective in the long run and far more unsettling to the extremist Muslim who has been trained to prepare for torture. The aggressive approach reinforces their preconception that America is Satan and that the coalition is a Zionist conspiracy bent on their destruction. Empathy, if it is authentic itself, is incredibly unsettling, and forces a person to question the legitimacy of their training and indoctrination.
In many ways, I have no other recourse but to identify with these people. We spread democracy, and they are spreading the Islamic State. And while we say that we are spreading the freedom of democracy, to so many of the Muslims in our wake, true freedom can only exist under the “rightful rule” of an Islamic Caliphate—much like the Jewish conception of the Messiah, or the millennial rule of Christ for Evangelicals. Our democratic freedom seems like nonsense (“grasping after the wind”) to much of the Muslim world.
So, last night we were expecting a “planned attack” upon the prison . . . but, thanks be to God, I slept like a baby. Actually, I sleep more here than I have in a long, long time. By the time my workday ends, I’m simply beat. I rise at about 5 a.m., work out and do the morning office of daily prayer, and then head to work. At lunch I’ve made a habit of eating with the local Iraqi workers, who are incredibly hospitable. There are always one or two 19- or 18-year-old uneducated Iraqis who are simply wide-eyed at my use of the Arabic language . . . “wait a minute, but you’re white!” I come to the chapel at lunch and dinner to eat and pray, and I talk for a few minutes every lunch with Iraqis.
The Book of Common Prayer has become my blood and breath. I’ve also written a special