(Cont. from Part 1) Bookman also adds an important element about the information that torturing the policeman produced. In the version of West's defenders, torturing the policeman let the Americans arrest other suspects who were planning an ambush on US troops - "enabling West's unit to ambush the ambushers" as David Hackworth put it (see my first post on West).
Bookman, who presumably is more constrained by standards of journalistic sourcing than Hackworth, gives a different view (my emphasis):
<< Not surprisingly, the terrified suspect then began babbling information. As is often the case when such crude techniques are used, it later proved impossible to verify whether that information was accurate or whether it had been invented by the suspect in a desperate attempt to save his life.
<< Nor was it clear that the suspect was guilty. As U.S. intelligence officers testified in a preliminary hearing in the case, Iraqis will often finger an innocent person to American troops as a way to wreak personal revenge on each other. >>
In his column, Bookman shows more sympathy for West than I have. But he's correct on the bottom line (my emphasis):
<< It is also true that in Iraq, we are engaged in a bitter struggle with people who do not recognize [US standards]. As the West case illustrates, it is tempting to then fight the battle on their terms, and in rare cases it may indeed be necessary to do so.
<< But those and other distinctions are part of why we're fighting. We believe such rules are important to civilized life; our opponents do not. In the eyes of the Iraqis, it is hard to distinguish ourselves from the previous regime if we ourselves do not attempt to live by the rules we claim to uphold. The suspect threatened by West, for example, was a policeman, and hundreds of U.S. personnel are trying hard every day to convince Iraqi policemen that such tactics are simply unacceptable. >>
He might have added that we're frantically trying to recruit Iraqi policemen, as well.
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