As Lieutenant Colonel John Nagl stated:

Military Field Manuals have their own grammar and their own logic. They are not doctoral dissertations, designed to be read by few and judged largely for the quality of their sourcing; instead, they are intended for applied use by Soldiers. Thus authors are not named, and those whose scholarship informs the manual are only credited if they are quoted extensively.

The essential point to be made is that the messages contained in the manual are valid, regardless of any discussion of academic standards. Any argument over missing citations should in no way diminish the manual's utility in the current counterinsurgency fight. The emphasis on cultural understanding and increased reliance on non-lethal forms of engagement to achieve military goals represents a giant leap forward in U.S. military doctrine.

Unfortunately, Dr. Price has chosen to focus his disagreement with current American foreign policy on the Human Terrain System. Rather than accept the Army's several offers to enter in a reasoned dialogue on the merits -- or lack of merits - of the role anthropologists can play in helping to reduce the use of lethal force to achieve military and political objectives, Dr. Price has chosen to wage a public and increasingly personal media campaign to discredit HTS and the dedicated social scientists associated with it.

The Human Terrain System is recognition of the fact that academic study and applied social science has practical uses, and those who have chosen to devote their time and efforts to exploring non-lethal alternatives to combat are making a vital contribution to the nation's efforts to secure a peaceful, stable and secure future for the people of Iraq and Afghanistan.

The long term by-product of their heroic efforts will be better informed military decisions that minimize casualties and suffering, and ultimately, optimized policy decision making within government that is harmonized with the ethical principles social science values the most.

-----

"Desperate People with Limited Skills" - LTC John Nagl, Small Wars Journal

Controversy: FM 3-24 Plagiarism "Scandal" -- Abu Muqawama

More on 3-24 and the Vanguard of Revolution -- Abu Muqawama

FM 3-24 "Scandal": Nagl Responds -- Abu Muqawama

Counterinsurgency Author Hits Back on "Plagiarism" - Danger Room (Wired)

A Surge in Plagiarism? - Harpers Magazine

Nagl Responds to Price - Savage Minds

Anthropologists and a True Culture War - Discuss at Small Wars Council

"Desperate People with Limited Skills" - Discuss at Small Wars Council

In the current issue of "Counterpunch", anthropologist Dr. David Price continues his assault on social scientists assisting national efforts to succeed in Iraq and Afghanistan. This time he impugns the work of anthropologists who helped write Field Manual 3-24, the Counterinsurgency Field Manual that was published by the Army and Marine Corps in December 2006 and republished by the University of Chicago Press in July 2007.

Price's essay is extensive, but the argument and the tone of the whole can be extrapolated from this paragraph on the first page:

Most academics know that bad things can happen when marginally skilled writers must produce ambitious amounts of writing in short time periods; sometimes the only resulting calamities are grammatical abominations, but in other instances the pressures to perform lead to shoddy academic practices. Neither of these outcomes is especially surprising among desperate people with limited skills-- but Petraeus and others leading the charge apparently did not worry about such trivialities: they had to crank out a new strategy to calm growing domestic anger at military failures in Iraq.

I will attempt to explain the motivation for the project that led to the writing of the Field Manual as I observed it, provide a few words explaining the process of writing doctrine, and then discuss the effects of the Counterinsurgency Field Manual in the field and on the American military. This is not an official response to Price's essay, and I do not speak on behalf of the Army, General Petraeus, or any of the other members of the team that produced the Counterinsurgency Field Manual, but only for myself.

Writing Field Manual 3-24, Counterinsurgency

When insurgencies arose in Afghanistan and in Iraq, the United States Army was unprepared to fight them. In the wake of Vietnam, the Army turned away from counterinsurgency, focusing instead on preparing for conventional war against the Soviet Union. The Army's last comprehensive counterinsurgency doctrine prior to FM 3-24 was written in 1967; a less ambitious manual on countering guerrillas was written in 1987. When the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan began, most Army officers knew more about the US Civil War than they did about counterinsurgency.

The Army hurriedly produced an interim counterinsurgency field manual in 2004, promising to deliver a more comprehensive version within two years. The revision effort caught fire with the return of then-Lieutenant General David Petraeus from his second tour in Iraq in late 2005. Recognizing the urgent need to help the military understand the wars it was fighting, Petraeus and his Marine Corps counterpart LtGen James Mattis pulled together a writing team that differed dramatically from the military officers who usually write field manuals.

The team included academics and practitioners from a number of disciplines ranging from anthropology and human rights to strategic studies and journalism; its core, however, was a small group of Army and Marine Corps officers, many with recent experience of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Petraeus picked his West Point classmate Conrad Crane, a retired Army officer and military historian with a PhD from Stanford, to lead the writing team, which volunteered to help out of a conviction that the Army and Marines needed a better instruction manual for the wars in which they were engaged.

The writing team had a lot of ground to cover. Counterinsurgency has been well described as "the graduate level of war"; success in counterinsurgency campaigns requires extraordinary political acumen, a real feel for the nature of the society in which the war is being waged, and an understanding of the political economy in the country and its neighbors, among dozens of other demanding requirements. Hence the need for a field manual writing team that could, and did, draw upon the best scholarship available. Remarkably, the team turned a draft of the manual in just two months—a process that often takes years. The draft manual was vetted at a conference Petraeus hosted at Fort Leavenworth in February 2006 that included journalists, human rights organizations, and military officers; at its conclusion, James Fallows of the Atlantic Monthly commented that he had never seen a more open exchange of ideas in any institution, and that the nation would be the better for more such exchanges.

Citations in Military Doctrine

Price describes the failure to cite all sources used in the manual as evidence of "shoddy academic practices", but in fact he is applying the standards of one society to those of a very different one—a violation of the anthropological norm of cultural relativism as I understand it. To paraphrase von Clausewitz, military Field Manuals have their own grammar and their own logic. They are not doctoral dissertations, designed to be read by few and judged largely for the quality of their sourcing; instead, they are intended for use by soldiers. Thus authors are not named, and those whose scholarship informs the manual are only credited if they are quoted extensively. This is not the academic way, but soldiers are not academics; it is my understanding that this longstanding practice in doctrine writing is well within the provisions of "fair use" copyright law.

Most Field Manuals discuss machine gun employment and the ranges of artillery systems and draw all but exclusively on other military writing for sourcing; because of its far broader subject matter, the Counterinsurgency Field Manual drew upon a wider range of academic scholarship. Citations of previous works were transferred into standard Field Manual format, with footnotes removed in order to improve readability. Primary chapter authors were encouraged to publish their chapters in peer-reviewed journals with proper academic citations; a number of chapters have been published, and it is likely that others will follow. In any case, failure to adhere to academic decorum involving footnotes has no bearing on the merit of the doctrine itself.

Price also decries the incomplete bibliography of the manual; again, he neglects consideration of the cultural practices of the society which he is examining. Bibliographies are not a common feature of Field Manuals; indeed, the Counterinsurgency Manual is the first of which I am aware that includes recommendations of civilian texts for further reading. The works cited in the bibliography are not all or even most of those consulted during the writing of the text, but those that soldiers are encouraged to read to further their understanding of counterinsurgency. This is a book for practitioners.

The Employment of Counterinsurgency Doctrine in Iraq

The proof of any recipe is in the pudding. David Petraeus was promoted to full General and selected for command of all forces in Iraq a month after the Manual was published, and he immediately put the principles enumerated there into practice. Perhaps the most important change in policy in Iraq since Petraeus assumed command has been an increased focus on providing security for the population, a basic precept of counterinsurgency that is the core of the Field Manual—and, one assumes, not one that arouses any ire from Dr. Price. It is a reach to attribute the lower civilian and military casualties in Iraq to the influence of a Field Manual, but the increased understanding of the principles of counterinsurgency that the publication of the Manual accelerated has certainly contributed to our—and the Iraqis'—recent successes there.

Critical to those successes has been a better understanding of the peoples of Iraq, an understanding that is a direct result of the influence of some of the people who contributed to the Field Manual. In particular, Dr. David Kilcullen, who recently served as General Petraeus' counterinsurgency adviser, played a key role in building bridges with the Sunni tribes who have recently turned against Al Qaeda in Iraq. Dr. Montgomery McFate, who also contributed to the manual, is working to further the use of anthropological knowledge in our counterinsurgency campaigns in both Iraq and Afghanistan to save more lives and build better societies.

I am confident that because of their efforts—and, more broadly, because of the contributions of a number of social scientists to an improved understanding of counterinsurgency in the United States government—there are many Iraqi and Afghan civilians who are alive today who might otherwise have been killed in action by well-meaning but more poorly informed soldiers. Arguably even more importantly, Al Qaeda in Iraq is far less of a threat to the people of Iraq and the United States today than it was six months ago—an outcome that even Osama bin Laden has acknowledged, and one that is largely a result of smarter policies enacted in part because of the contributions of social scientists. Fewer needless casualties and a safer planet should, in my eyes at least, cause us to thank rather than castigate those who apply human knowledge to the cause of fighting as judiciously and as intelligently as possible. I am sincerely hopeful that the broader and deeper understanding of other societies that anthropologists like Drs. Kilcullen and McFate bring to the table will diminish not just the casualties in the wars we are fighting today, but also make future wars less likely.

There is real danger in Dr. Price's jeremiad against Montgomery McFate, David Kilcullen, and the other anthropologists who are taking not just academic but also personal risks to help America fight more intelligently. General Sir William Francis Butler noted a century ago that "The nation that draws a clear line of demarcation between its thinking men and its fighting men will soon have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting done by fools." I am pleased that our nation is not in that perilous condition, and am proud to be associated with the Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual.

-----

A response to the response -- David Price's reply in Counterpunch. Published 3 Nov.

Army Response to Counterpunch - Small Wars Journal

Controversy: FM 3-24 Plagiarism "Scandal" -- Abu Muqawama

More on 3-24 and the Vanguard of Revolution -- Abu Muqawama

FM 3-24 "Scandal": Nagl Responds -- Abu Muqawama

Counterinsurgency Author Hits Back on "Plagiarism" - Danger Room (Wired)

A Surge in Plagiarism? - Harpers Magazine

Nagl Responds to Price - Savage Minds

Anthropologists and a True Culture War - Discuss at Small Wars Council

"Desperate People with Limited Skills" - Discuss at Small Wars Council

From the earlier post (updated):

The Small Wars Center of Excellence had the privilege of organizing a Counterinsurgency (COIN) seminar featuring Dr. David Kilcullen on 26 September at Marine Corps Base, Quantico, Virginia.

Dr. Kilcullen spoke to a standing room only crowd at the Gray Research Center and provided an excellent and very informative brief (1 ½ hour) followed by a Q&A period that could have lasted well beyond the allotted 45 minutes.

The purpose and scope of the COIN seminar was to share some basic observations on COIN theory and practice derived primarily from Dr. Kilcullen's service in Iraq (2006 and 2007), Afghanistan (2006), and pre 9/11 campaigns in SE Asia and the Pacific. Additionally, the forum served as a conduit to open a discussion on issues relevant to seminar attendees.

Dr. Kilcullen opened with a caveat -- everyone sees Iraq differently, depending on when they served there, what they did and where they worked. Because the environment is highly complex, ambiguous and fluid; observations from one time / place may or may not be applicable elsewhere -- even in the same campaign in the same year. He enjoined the audience to first understand the essentials of the environment, then determine whether analogous situations exist, before attempting to apply "lessons". Dr. Kilcullen's role in Iraq (hence his bias) was as Senior COIN Advisor to General David Petraeus (Commanding General, Multi-National Force -- Iraq [M-NF -- I]). He spent approximately 65 percent of his time in the field and the remainder at M-NF -- I Headquarters and the US Embassy in Baghdad.

The Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory's Wargaming Division has posted Dr. Kilcullen's briefing slides here. The SWJ has posted a 'backup' copy of the brief here. The presentation, as well as the Q&A were videotaped and will be made available; along with the briefing slides, the summary report, a 45 minute video interview with Dr. Kilcullen, and several of his articles and SWJ Blog postings; on DVD. I'll post another heads-up as the DVD production date nears.

Last week the Attorney General nominee Judge Michael Mukasey refused to define waterboarding terror suspects as torture. On the same day MSNBC television pundit and former Republican Congressman Joe Scarborough quickly spoke out in its favor. On his morning television broadcast, he asserted, without any basis in fact, that the efficacy of the waterboard a viable tool to be used on Al Qaeda suspects.

Scarborough said, "For those who don't know, waterboarding is what we did to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who is the Al Qaeda number two guy that planned 9/11. And he talked ..." He then speculated that "If you ask Americans whether they think it's okay for us to waterboard in a controlled environment ... 90% of Americans will say 'yes.'" Sensing that what he was saying sounded extreme, he then claimed he did not support torture but that waterboarding was debatable as a technique: "You know, that's the debate. Is waterboarding torture? ... I don't want the United States to engage in the type of torture that [Senator] John McCain had to endure."

In fact, waterboarding is just the type of torture then Lt. Commander John McCain had to endure at the hands of the North Vietnamese. As a former Master Instructor and Chief of Training at the US Navy Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape School (SERE) in San Diego, California I know the waterboard personally and intimately. SERE staff were required undergo the waterboard at its fullest. I was no exception. I have personally led, witnessed and supervised waterboarding of hundreds of people. It has been reported that both the Army and Navy SERE school's interrogation manuals were used to form the interrogation techniques used by the US army and the CIA for its terror suspects. What was not mentioned in most articles was that SERE was designed to show how an evil totalitarian, enemy would use torture at the slightest whim. If this is the case, then waterboarding is unquestionably being used as torture technique.

The carnival-like he-said, she-said of the legality of Enhanced Interrogation Techniques has become a form of doublespeak worthy of Catch-22. Having been subjected to them all, I know these techniques, if in fact they are actually being used, are not dangerous when applied in training for short periods. However, when performed with even moderate intensity over an extended time on an unsuspecting prisoner -- it is torture, without doubt. Couple that with waterboarding and the entire medley not only "shock the conscience" as the statute forbids -it would terrify you. Most people can not stand to watch a high intensity kinetic interrogation. One has to overcome basic human decency to endure watching or causing the effects. The brutality would force you into a personal moral dilemma between humanity and hatred. It would leave you to question the meaning of what it is to be an American.

We live at a time where Americans, completely uninformed by an incurious media and enthralled by vengeance-based fantasy television shows like "24", are actually cheering and encouraging such torture as justifiable revenge for the September 11 attacks. Having been a rescuer in one of those incidents and personally affected by both attacks, I am bewildered at how casually we have thrown off the mantle of world-leader in justice and honor. Who we have become? Because at this juncture, after Abu Ghraieb and other undignified exposed incidents of murder and torture, we appear to have become no better than our opponents.

With regards to the waterboard, I want to set the record straight so the apologists can finally embrace the fact that they condone and encourage torture.

History's Lessons Ignored

Before arriving for my assignment at SERE, I traveled to Cambodia to visit the torture camps of the Khmer Rouge. The country had just opened for tourism and the effect of the genocide was still heavy in the air. I wanted to know how real torturers and terror camp guards would behave and learn how to resist them from survivors of such horrors. I had previously visited the Nazi death camps Dachau and Bergen-Belsen. I had met and interviewed survivors of Buchenwald, Auschwitz and Magdeburg when I visited Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. However, it was in the S-21 death camp known as Tuol Sleng, in downtown Phnom Penh, where I found a perfectly intact inclined waterboard. Next to it was the painting on how it was used. It was cruder than ours mainly because they used metal shackles to strap the victim down, and a tin flower pot sprinkler to regulate the water flow rate, but it was the same device I would be subjected to a few weeks later.

On a Mekong River trip, I met a 60-year-old man, happy to be alive and a cheerful travel companion, who survived the genocide and torture ... he spoke openly about it and gave me a valuable lesson: "If you want to survive, you must learn that 'walking through a low door means you have to be able to bow.'" He told his interrogators everything they wanted to know including the truth. They rarely stopped. In torture, he confessed to being a hermaphrodite, a CIA spy, a Buddhist Monk, a Catholic Bishop and the son of the king of Cambodia. He was actually just a school teacher whose crime was that he once spoke French. He remembered "the Barrel" version of waterboarding quite well. Head first until the water filled the lungs, then you talk.

Once at SERE and tasked to rewrite the Navy SERE program for the first time since the Vietnam War, we incorporated interrogation and torture techniques from the Middle East, Latin America and South Asia into the curriculum. In the process, I studied hundreds of classified written reports, dozens of personal memoirs of American captives from the French-Indian Wars and the American Revolution to the Argentinean 'Dirty War' and Bosnia. There were endless hours of videotaped debriefings from World War Two, Korea, Vietnam and Gulf War POWs and interrogators. I devoured the hundreds of pages of debriefs and video reports including those of then Commander John McCain, Colonel Nick Rowe, Lt. Dieter Dengler and Admiral James Stockdale, the former Senior Ranking Officer of the Hanoi Hilton. All of them had been tortured by the Vietnamese, Pathet Lao or Cambodians. The minutiae of North Vietnamese torture techniques was discussed with our staff advisor and former Hanoi Hilton POW Doug Hegdahl as well as discussions with Admiral Stockdale himself. The waterboard was clearly one of the tools dictators and totalitarian regimes preferred.

There is No Debate Except for Torture Apologists

1. Waterboarding is a torture technique. Period. There is no way to gloss over it or sugarcoat it. It has no justification outside of its limited role as a training demonstrator. Our service members have to learn that the will to survive requires them accept and understand that they may be subjected to torture, but that America is better than its enemies and it is one's duty to trust in your nation and God, endure the hardships and return home with honor.

2. Waterboarding is not a simulation. Unless you have been strapped down to the board, have endured the agonizing feeling of the water overpowering your gag reflex, and then feel your throat open and allow pint after pint of water to involuntarily fill your lungs, you will not know the meaning of the word.

Waterboarding is a controlled drowning that, in the American model, occurs under the watch of a doctor, a psychologist, an interrogator and a trained strap-in/strap-out team. It does not simulate drowning, as the lungs are actually filling with water. There is no way to simulate that. The victim is drowning. How much the victim is to drown depends on the desired result (in the form of answers to questions shouted into the victim's face) and the obstinacy of the subject. A team doctor watches the quantity of water that is ingested and for the physiological signs which show when the drowning effect goes from painful psychological experience, to horrific suffocating punishment to the final death spiral.

Waterboarding is slow motion suffocation with enough time to contemplate the inevitability of black out and expiration --usually the person goes into hysterics on the board. For the uninitiated, it is horrifying to watch and if it goes wrong, it can lead straight to terminal hypoxia. When done right it is controlled death. Its lack of physical scarring allows the victim to recover and be threaten with its use again and again.

Call it "Chinese Water Torture," "the Barrel," or "the Waterfall," it is all the same. Whether the victim is allowed to comply or not is usually left up to the interrogator. Many waterboard team members, even in training, enjoy the sadistic power of making the victim suffer and often ask questions as an after thought. These people are dangerous and predictable and when left unshackled, unsupervised or undetected they bring us the murderous abuses seen at Abu Ghraieb, Baghram and Guantanamo. No doubt, to avoid human factors like fear and guilt someone has created a one-button version that probably looks like an MRI machine with high intensity waterjets.

3. If you support the use of waterboarding on enemy captives, you support the use of that torture on any future American captives. The Small Wars Council had a spirited discussion about this earlier in the year, especially when former Marine Generals Krulak and Hoar rejected all arguments for torture.

Evan Wallach wrote a brilliant history of the use of waterboarding as a war crime and the open acceptance of it by the administration in an article for Columbia Journal for Transnational Law. In it he describes how the ideological Justice Department lawyer, John Yoo validated the current dilemma we find ourselves in by asserting that the President had powers above and beyond the Constitution and the Congress:

"Congress doesn't have the power to tie the President's hands in regard to torture as an interrogation technique....It's the core of the Commander-in-Chief function. They can't prevent the President from ordering torture."

That is an astounding assertion. It reflects a basic disregard for the law of the United States, the Constitution and basic moral decency.

Another MSNBC commentator defended the administration and stated that waterboarding is "not a new phenomenon" and that it had "been pinned on President Bush ... but this has been part of interrogation for years and years and years." He is correct, but only partially. The Washington Post reported in 2006 that it was mainly America's enemies that used it as a principal interrogation method. After World War 2, Japanese waterboard team members were tried for war crimes. In Vietnam, service members were placed under investigation when a photo of a field-expedient waterboarding became publicly known.

Torture in captivity simulation training reveals there are ways an enemy can inflict punishment which will render the subject wholly helpless and which will generally overcome his willpower. The torturer will trigger within the subject a survival instinct, in this case the ability to breathe, which makes the victim instantly pliable and ready to comply. It is purely and simply a tool by which to deprive a human being of his ability to resist through physical humiliation. The very concept of an American Torturer is an anathema to our values.

I concur strongly with the opinions of professional interrogators like Colonel Stewart Herrington, and victims of torture like Senator John McCain. If you want consistent, accurate and reliable intelligence, be inquisitive, analytical, patient but most of all professional, amiable and compassionate.

Who will complain about the new world-wide embrace of torture? America has justified it legally at the highest levels of government. Even worse, the administration has selectively leaked supposed successes of the water board such as the alleged Khalid Sheik Mohammed confessions. However, in the same breath the CIA sources for the Washington Post noted that in Mohammed's case they got information but "not all of it reliable." Of course, when you waterboard you get all the magic answers you want -because remember, the subject will talk. They all talk! Anyone strapped down will say anything, absolutely anything to get the torture to stop. Torture. Does. Not. Work.

According to the President, this is not a torture, so future torturers in other countries now have an American legal basis to perform the acts. Every hostile intelligence agency and terrorist in the world will consider it a viable tool, which can be used with impunity. It has been turned into perfectly acceptable behavior for information finding.

A torture victim can be made to say anything by an evil nation that does not abide by humanity, morality, treaties or rule of law. Today we are on the verge of becoming that nation. Is it possible that September 11 hurt us so much that we have decided to gladly adopt the tools of KGB, the Khmer Rouge, the Nazi Gestapo, the North Vietnamese, the North Koreans and the Burmese Junta?

What next if the waterboarding on a critical the captive doesn't work and you have a timetable to stop the "ticking bomb" scenario? Electric shock to the genitals? Taking a pregnant woman and electrocuting the fetus inside her? Executing a captive's children in front of him? Dropping live people from an airplane over the ocean? It has all been done by governments seeking information. All claimed the same need to stop the ticking bomb. It is not a far leap from torture to murder, especially if the subject is defiant. Are we —to trade our nation's soul for tactical intelligence?

Is There a Place for the Waterboard?

Yes. The waterboard must go back to the realm of SERE training our operators, soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines. We must now double our efforts to prepare for its inevitable and uncontrolled use of by our future enemies.

Until recently, only a few countries considered it effective. Now American use of the waterboard as an interrogation tool has assuredly guaranteed that our service members and agents who are captured or detained by future enemies will be subject to it as part of the most routine interrogations. Forget threats, poor food, the occasional face slap and sexual assaults. This was not a dignified 'taking off the gloves'; this was descending to the level of our opposition in an equally brutish and ugly way. Waterboarding will be one our future enemy's go-to techniques because we took the gloves off to brutal interrogation. Now our enemies will take the gloves off and thank us for it.

There may never again be a chance that Americans will benefit from the shield of outrage and public opinion when our future enemy uses of torture. Brutal interrogation, flash murder and extreme humiliation of American citizens, agents and members of the armed forces may now be guaranteed because we have mindlessly, but happily, broken the seal on the Pandora's box of indignity, cruelty and hatred in the name of protecting America. To defeat Bin Laden many in this administration have openly embraced the methods of by Hitler, Pinochet, Pol Pot, Galtieri and Saddam Hussein.

Not A Fair Trade for America's Honor

I have stated publicly and repeatedly that I would personally cut Bin Laden's heart out with a plastic MRE spoon if we per chance meet on the battlefield. Yet, once captive I believe that the better angels of our nature and our nation's core values would eventually convince any terrorist that they indeed have erred in their murderous ways. Once convicted in a fair, public tribunal, they would have the rest of their lives, however short the law makes it, to come to terms with their God and their acts.

This is not enough for our President. He apparently secretly ordered the core American values of fairness and justice to be thrown away in the name of security from terrorists. He somehow determined that the honor the military, the CIA and the nation itself was an acceptable trade for the superficial knowledge of the machinations of approximately 2,000 terrorists, most of whom are being decimated in Iraq or martyring themselves in Afghanistan. It is a short sighted and politically motivated trade that is simply disgraceful. There is no honor here.

It is outrageous that American officials, including the Attorney General and a legion of minions of lower rank have not only embraced this torture but have actually justified it, redefined it to a misdemeanor, brought it down to the level of a college prank and then bragged about it. The echo chamber that is the American media now views torture as a heroic and macho.

Torture advocates hide behind the argument that an open discussion about specific American interrogation techniques will aid the enemy. Yet, convicted Al Qaeda members and innocent captives who were released to their host nations have already debriefed the world through hundreds of interviews, movies and documentaries on exactly what methods they were subjected to and how they endured. In essence, our own missteps have created a cadre of highly experienced lecturers for Al Qaeda's own virtual SERE school for terrorists.

Congressional leaders from both sides of the aisle need to stand up for American values and clearly specify that coercive interrogation using the waterboard is torture and, except for limited examples of training our service members and intelligence officers, it should be stopped completely and finally --oh, and this time without a Presidential signing statement reinterpreting the law.

-----

Updates by SWJ Editors

Links

Drowning in Questions - Newsweek Magazine

Voice of Experience: It's Torture - Military.com

Waterboarding Not Deemed Torture by US - Australian News

'Waterboarding' Not Deemed Torture - AFP

Expert Sheds Light on Waterboarding - Audio of NPR Interview with Malcolm Nance

Is Waterboarding Torture? - Audio of WNYC Interview with Malcolm Nance

I Know Waterboarding is Torture - Because I did it Myself - New York Daily News

Waterboarding is Torture - I Did It Myself - The Independent

Regarding Media - Los Angeles Times

On Torture, 2 Messages and a High Political Cost - New York Times

The Mukasey Test - Washington Times

A Crisis of Honor - The Daily Dish (The Atlantic)

Ace Interrogator: "Waterboarding is Torture... Period." - Passport (Foreign Policy)

Tortured Logic - New York Daily News

The Mukasey Test -- Washington Times

Target Mukasey - New York Post

Mukasey's Confirmation: A Vote about Torture -- Los Angeles Times

There's No Avoiding the Waterboarding Issue - Kansas City Star

Links with Comments

Malcolm Nance - Díºnedain of the Week - Stonekettle Station

Ex-Navy Instructor Promises to Hit Back If Attacked on Torture - TPM Muckraker

Waterboarding is Torture - Abu Muqawama

Waterboarding is Torture... Period - MountainRunner

Waterboarding is Torture... Period -- The Belmont Club

Politics - Tip-Toeing Around Torture - The AG (Time)

Tortured Answer - Slate

Target: Jamal al-Badawi - The Captain's Journal

We Legitimized Waterboarding - Swampland (Time)

On the Virtue of Waterboarding and Secret Prisons -- Blackfive

Waterboarding is Torture... Period - Mother Jones

Former Navy SEAL Instructor Offers Waterboarding Primer - TPM Muckraker

SERE Instructor: Waterboarding is Torture - Captain's Quarters

My Opinion is Fact, Period: On Rhetoric, Waterboarding, and Torture - tdaxp

10 Questions on Torture - tdaxp

Waterboarding is Torture - Outside the Beltway

Troubled Waters - Wizbang

Slow Motion Suffocation - Headline Junky

A Bluf that Needs to be Called, Part Two - Power Line

Waterboarding is Torture - Interact

Waterboarding the Senate - PrairiePundit

Defending Democracy Using of Khmer Rouge Techniques - The American Prospect

Barbaric - Total Information Awareness

SEAL on Waterboarding - Winds of Change

If You Read One Post About Waterboarding - The Plank (The New Republic)

McCain on Rudy on Torture. (Updated) - Comonweal

Waterboarding is Torture - The Raw Story

Waterboarding - Obsidian Wings

Meanwhile, Back in the Real World - Catholic and Enjoying It

Come for the Beaches, Stay for the Waterboarding -- MetaFilter

The Water Cooler - Inside Indiana Message Boards

Impressive Article on Waterboarding - Gun Broker Discussion Board

Waterboarding is Torture - Space Battles Discussion Board

Discuss

Small Wars Council

... Two trends over the past four decades contributed to our national ignorance of the cost, and necessity, of victory. First, the most privileged Americans used the Vietnam War as an excuse to break their tradition of uniformed service.....

Second, we've stripped in-depth U.S. history classes out of our schools.

Myth No. 1: War doesn't change anything.

Myth No. 2: Victory is impossible today.

Myth No. 3: Insurgencies can never be defeated.

Myth No. 4: There's no military solution; only negotiations can solve our problems.

Myth No. 5: When we fight back, we only provoke our enemies.

Myth No. 6: Killing terrorists only turns them into martyrs.

Myth No. 7: If we fight as fiercely as our enemies, we're no better than them.

Myth No. 8: The United States is more hated today than ever before.

Myth No. 9: Our invasion of Iraq created our terrorist problems.

Myth No. 10: If we just leave, the Iraqis will patch up their differences on their own.

Myth No. 11: It's all Israel's fault. Or the popular Washington corollary: "The Saudis are our friends."

Myth No. 12: The Middle East's problems are all America's fault.

... The unprecedented wealth and power of the United States allows us to afford many things denied to human beings throughout history. But we, the people, cannot afford ignorance.

Discuss at Small Wars Council

One that I would add is The Village by Bing West.

To see what Council members are reading go here.

Joint Force Quarterly is published by the National Defense University Press for the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. JFQ is the Chairman's flagship joint military and security studies journal designed to inform members of the U.S. Armed Forces, allies, and other partners on joint and integrated operations; national security policy and strategy; efforts to combat terrorism; homeland security; and developments in training and joint professional military education to transform America's military and security apparatus to better meet tomorrow's challenges while protecting freedom today.

Issue 47, 4th Quarter 2007 of Joint Force Quarterly is now posted. Here are several articles of interest:

The Country Team: Restructuring America's First Line of Engagement by Robert Oakley and Michael Casey, Jr.

The Phoenix Program and Contemporary Warfare by Mark Moyar

Arresting Insurgency by Kyle Teamey

The U.S. Air Force and Stability Operations Transformation by Oliver Fritz and Gregory Hermsmeyer

The Missing Component of U.S. Strategic Communications by William M. Darley

Anaconda: A Flawed Joint Planning Process by Richard B. Andres and Jeffrey B. Hukill

Five Years after Operation Anaconda: Challenges and Opportunities by Michael W. Isherwood

Countering Chinese Influence in Africa by Philippe Rogers

Five Lessons from China's War on Terror by Martin Wayne

More in this "Focus on China" edition of JFQ.

... On Monday, 200 to 300 employees will be notified of their selection as "prime candidates" for 50 open positions in Iraq, said Harry K. Thomas, director general of the Foreign Service. Some are expected to respond by volunteering, he said. However, if an insufficient number volunteers by Nov. 12, a department panel will determine which ones will be ordered to report to the Baghdad embassy next summer...

While we applaud (what we call "long overdue") this move, we do acknowledge that State and other non-military departments and agencies lack the resources to fulfill their COIN obligations. It is time for Congress to get serious and ensure that our Nation has the capacity to deploy fully-trained and mission-capable personnel that truly represent all elements of national power.

Abu Muqawama on the resource shortage:

Folks in the Department of Defense like to blame things in Iraq on State and the other agencies, but there are two big problems with the State Department: One, it's too darn small. It is no accident that 2008 presidential candidates are echoing Newt Gingrich's call to triple the size of the department -- or at least increase the number of officers. Two, unlike the U.S. military, State has no real expeditionary history. When a soldier is ordered to war, he goes. State, meanwhile, does not "mobilize" and "deploy" it's personnel. Neither, for that matter, does the Department of Justice, the Department of the Treasury, or any of the other agencies that need to partner with Defense in an effort like that in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Dr. David Kilcullen on the imbalance in government capability:

At present, the U.S. defense budget accounts for approximately half of total global defense spending, while the U.S. armed forces employ about 1.68 million uniformed members. By comparison, the State Department employs about 6,000 foreign service officers, while the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has about 2,000. In other words, the Department of Defense is about 210 times larger than USAID and State combined—there are substantially more people employed as musicians in Defense bands than in the entire foreign service.

This is not to criticize Defense—armed services are labor- and capital-intensive and are always larger than diplomatic or aid agencies. But considering the importance, in this form of conflict, of development, diplomacy, and information (the U.S. Information Agency was abolished in 1999 and the State Department figures given include its successor bureau), a clear imbalance exists between military and nonmilitary elements of capacity. This distorts policy and is unusual by global standards. For example, Australia's military is approximately nine times larger than its diplomatic and aid agencies combined: The military arm is larger, but not 210 times larger, than the other elements of national power.

To its credit, the Department of Defense recognizes the problems inherent in such an imbalance, and said so in the 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review. And the Bush administration has programs in train to increase nonmilitary capacity. But to succeed over the long haul, we need a sustained commitment to build nonmilitary elements of national power. So-called soft powers, such as private-sector economic strength, national reputation, and cultural confidence, are crucial, because military power alone cannot compensate for their loss.

Of course there is dissent, most notably by the American Foreign Service Association, the union representing Foreign Service employees. John Naland, AFSA President, on 17 October:

The State Department so far has been able to fill its Iraq positions with volunteers. Every one of the more than 2,000 career Foreign Service members who have stepped up to the plate to serve in Iraq has done so as a volunteer. They receive less than two-weeks of special training to serve in a combat zone (unlike their predecessors 40 years ago who received three to four months of training before deploying to South Vietnam in the CORDS program). While Foreign Service volunteers in Iraq do receive added pay and other incentives (but not tax-free income like the military enjoys), surveys show that most are motivated by patriotism and a professional desire to contribute to our nation's top foreign policy objective. If the State Department ever does run out of volunteers, the Secretary of State retains the legal authority to direct assignments.

Well Mr. Naland, Secretary Rice is exercising that legal authority and directing assignments to Iraq. But still, AFSA resists:

"We believe, and we have told the secretary of state, that directing unarmed civilians who are untrained for combat into a war zone should be done on a voluntary basis," said Steve Kashkett, vice president of the American Foreign Service Association. "Directed assignments, we fear, can be detrimental to the individual, to the post, and to the Foreign Service as a whole."

Kashkett said the association had contended in meetings with Rice and Thomas that a diplomatic draft is unnecessary and that "thousands" of diplomats have volunteered for Iraq over the past five years. "We're not weenies, we're not cowards, we're not cookie pushers in Europe," he said. "This has never been necessary in a generation."

In related news, Inside the Pentagon reports on a speech given by retired US Army Colonel Robert Killebrew, former deputy director of the 'Army After Next Project' at U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command. He spoke at a 22 October event organized by the Brookings Institution and the U.S. Army War College. Concerning the Department of State and its role in COIN operations Killebrew stated:

... "We are best served by a strategy of decentralization to forward-station forces that are permanently in the country, that can be molded and adapted and reinforced as the crises builds," he continued. "And when I say forces, I mean primarily the U.S. State Department country team headed by a capable ambassador" and other government organizations enforcing an interagency approach to the situation.

"Every counterinsurgency expert always says that in a counterinsurgency situation, the political should lead the military. And we absolutely do not do that when we send military forces into a country with the U.S. ambassador," Killebrew said.

The emphasis on local forces waging a war is rooted in a belief that the presence of foreign troops in a country like Iraq, regardless of well-meaning motives, always prompts insurgents to claim that infidels are trying to conquer their lands, he explained.

To that end, the next administration must rebuild the State Department's capabilities, he said. "And when you do that, you have to understand that you're dealing with a traumatized child. State is so accustomed to being abused by Congress," he said, adding there are not enough senior staffers to fight for more resources on Capitol Hill. "That has got to change," Killebrew said...

More from Abu Muqawama...

... All of this begs the question as to what State's role is in COIN campaigns? Charlie has heard military officers refer all too often to "civilian capacity" with the idea that the Foreign Service is chock full of experts on agriculture, water and electrical systems, tribal cultures, and more. This blogger is pretty sure that if those people existed, they'd volunteer to be on the first flights overseas (and to the extent that those skills do exist, those folks are true first responders). But the Foreign Service exists to represent US interests in foreign capitols. If we want an expeditionary State Department, we're going to have to (re)create one in much the same way we have to (re)create those capabilities in the Army and Marine Corps as well...

Links:

State Department to Order Diplomats to Iraq - Outside the Beltway

State Department to Order 250 to Iraq Posts - Reuters

Where U.S. Diplomats Fear to Tread - International Herald Tribune

COIN: Smart Soldiers (and Diplomats) - Blackfive

Department of State Stepping Up to Iraq Needs? - Chaos-In-Motion

House Committee on Foreign Affairs: Testimony of Steven Kashkett (AFSA) - Working in a War Zone: Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in Civilians Returning from Iraq

Dangerous Postings: Life in the Foreign Service - National Public Radio

Counterinsurgency -- US Army Field Manual 3-24 / Marine Corps Warfighting Publication 33.3.5

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