Former U.S. Interrogator, Eric Fair, Speaks Out

    Meet Eric Fair, a former contract interrogator in Iraq. He has an interesting article in the Washington Post on the nightmares that he suffers through since he  has come home from Iraq. He speaks on the interrogation of one prisoner who was in custody

I was one of two civilian interrogators assigned to the division interrogation facility (DIF) of the 82nd Airborne Division.

The lead interrogator at the DIF had given me specific instructions: I was to deprive the detainee of sleep during my 12-hour shift by opening his cell every hour, forcing him to stand in a corner and stripping him of his clothes.

   Mr. Fair goes on to state that it is he who now can not sleep because of the nightmares with this prisoner's face always in his dream. Mr. Fair has a guilt trip over what went on during the interrogating process.

American authorities continue to insist that the abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib was an isolated incident in an otherwise well-run detention system. That insistence, however, stands in sharp contrast to my own experiences as an interrogator in Iraq. I watched as detainees were forced to stand naked all night, shivering in their cold cells and pleading with their captors for help. Others were subjected to long periods of isolation in pitch-black rooms. Food and sleep deprivation were common, along with a variety of physical abuse, including punching and kicking. Aggressive, and in many ways abusive, techniques were used daily in Iraq, all in the name of acquiring the intelligence necessary to bring an end to the insurgency. The violence raging there today is evidence that those tactics never worked. My memories are evidence that those tactics were terribly wrong.  WaPo Article

  

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