Democracy for Vancouver

From a transcript of a roundtable yesterday between pro-war bloggers and Marine Maj. Gen. Douglas M. Stone, Commander, U.S. detention facilities in Iraq (where there are now at least 25,000 detainees):

STONE: We are now almost full-bore into all of our new programs … to understand who we’ve got and what their orientation towards religion, their skill, their education, their morale and motivation of what got them here. We are assigning them to certain theater internment facilities based on, you know, what our assessment is of being able to take them from, if they are on the extremist end or just under the unemployment end, to kind of get them modeled back and bend them back to our will…

It’s good to know we’re locking up the unemployed: idle hands are the devil’s workshop. But I wonder why they can’t find any work?

STONE: Our religious enlightenment courses are really up and running now. Vo tech has just started, and our work programs are going very well.

Our follow-on assessments are exciting. We’re finding that we can bring some of the edge off of the folks, put them back through our assessments and determine that we’ve been able to, you know, bring them back to a point where we can at least evaluate them. Now, I’m not talking about anybody that comes in, in the last month or two, but we’re talking about guys that have been here for a couple of years now.

What the hell do we need habeas corpus for when we are giving them vo tech and religious enlightenment courses? Eat your heart out, Andover parents - the Iraqis get it for free.

STONE: I can’t tell you what’s going to happen with releases other than, you know, we think we’re seeing about 25 percent right now that probably are okay to be released… There’s another 30 percent that we wouldn’t release under, I think, almost any situation right now. We don’t have the programs to turn them, and they don’t want to be turned.

Maybe because we’ve invaded and occupied their fucking country, and done shit like this?

STONE: The number of third-country nationals we have now are about 280… Actually, foreign fighters are 282, and juveniles are just under — it’s about 840-something, so we had 6 come in yesterday.

282 foreign fighters out of 25,000 detainees? But I thought Commander Codpiece said in June:

The influx of foreign fighters and foreign support makes this job a lot tougher — tougher on the Iraqis, tougher on our troops. We can expect more casualties as our forces enter enemy strongholds and push back against foreign interference.

They must be some badass foreign fighters, if they’re only 1% of the detainees but cause all that trouble.

STONE: So now, the trend is towards the youth. And you know, if they’re 11 years old and 12 years old and 13 years old, we tend to see them, the psychologists tend too see them as, you know, kids that, you know, are — can be told to do anything and they’ll go do it. The older ones, the 15, 16, 17-year-old ones, you know, they’re the harder nuts… And then they get dealt with in the criminal system the way that you would expect them to be dealt with.

It’s the rest of them that we’re trying to turn in, and I wish I had lots of numbers that I’d been able to release and tell you how well they’re working. The bigger numbers that I have are those that we’re working with that don’t want to be released, or they’re — you know, their guardians or their parents don’t want them to be released.

Because they’re safer inside than in their own neighborhoods. that’s somewhat different than pre-invasion, I would guess.

STONE: I make this point emphatic to all my troops, that, you know, when our troops are hurt on an IED incident, that the enemy had a victory that day and we had a defeat. We didn’t have a bad day or, you know, a nonsuccessful event; we frickin’ got defeated on that day.

So, it’s blame the victim, eh? No wonder there’s so much PTSD going around.

STONE: …I think that’s a topic that America needs to hear, that at least in big chunks of the war going on, you know, we are about trying to have victory.

…And then I think they need to hear about the objectives. I mean, sure, we’re here to enforce or ensure our standards of care and custody are met, but I’m also here to determine if a detainee is an imperative security risk.

And so — and if he is a risk, then I’m going to reduce that risk, and I’m going to replace that destructive ideology. …

Now, I’ll tell you something that has never happened, in my recollection, in detention and happened on September the 2nd of this year. We had a compound of moderates, for the first time, overtake Takfirist extremists. It’s never happened before. Found them, identified them, threw them up against the fence, and shaved the frickin’ beards off of them. That — I mean, that is historic. I mean, I think — I mean — and I could give you another two or three like that. But I mean, when you’re in my business and you see something like that happen, you just go, “You’re kidding me!”

You’re shitting me. You’re proud of this? Creating more factionalism, more violence between culturally defined groups? Are you fucking nuts?

STONE: We’ve got this — the brand-new and created one-of-a-kind, albeit homogenized, among seven other programs, on religious enlightenment — never been done before. …I’m running a big factory here. I’m not doing an individual, you know, gig like, you know, Saudi — they can pick those guys, give them a million bucks and give them a wife. That’s not the business we’re in.

… I’ve got detainee — a huge, expensive — (chuckling) — detainee motivation and morale study going on with RAND Corporation. We’ve got — but they’re great, great guys, and they are over the top — I mean, these guys are wedded to what we’re doing, and they are helping out day …

Great. We’re even privatizing re-education.

STONE: None of us are smart enough — there is no doctrine — I can’t go to a book and figure out how to do what I’m doing. I can’t pick up any doctrine, even the COIN manual, as much as I like it, and find out how to do what I’m doing in detention. There’s nothing to that.

So — and there’s not anybody that picks up the phone and calls me and says, “Hey, how about — you know, really, you’re screwing up because you really ought to be doing this,” you know?

I think that’s what they call Situation Normal, All Fucked Up.

STONE: I will tell you, there’s not one guy in my line of work; there’s not one commander that I have; there’s not one guy in interrogation who won’t tell you, the number one problem to drain the swamp … is jobs.

They need to get work. They don’t have it, and so they go [make money helping the insurgency].

…I don’t want these guys to hurt a Marine or a soldier. So, if I can get them out and get them on a pledge and guarantor and I have a reduced recapture rate, that’s good. But I’m also not naive. If they don’t have any income, they’re going to go back. So I’m thinking about a self-enlightened program for the detainees for six months to a year to keep them off the streets. You know, if I can just buy one or two years in detention and one year on the outside, that’s three years. That’s a lot of time. I don’t know how many troops that would save, but that’s a lot of troops. … I’m not a do-gooder. That’s not why I’m here. But I do know that if they’re off the streets, they’re not going to come after our troops.

Why don’t we just lock up the whole goddamn population and throw away the key? It worked for Stalin - he liked a bit of re-education, too.

Jesus, WTF.

Emphasis added throughout. H/t to Scout for the link.